“Will you shut that window and have done talking,” said Sweeny from the bed. “There’s a draught coming in this minute that would lift the feathers from a goose.”
Mrs. Sweeny, though an oppressed woman, was not wanting in spirit. She gave Peter Walsh’s message in a way calculated to rouse and irritate her husband.
“He says that if you don’t get up out of that mighty quick there’ll be them here that will make you.”
“Hell to your soul!” said Sweeny, “what way’s that of talking? Ask him now is the wind in the southeast or is it not?”
“I can tell you that myself,” said Mrs. Sweeny. “It is not; for if it was it would be in on this window and my hair would be blew off my head.”
“Ask him,” said Sweeny, “what boats is in the harbor, and then shut down the window.”
Mrs. Sweeny put her head and shoulders out of the window.
“Himself wants to know,” she said, “what boats is at the quay. You needn’t be looking at me like that, Peter Walsh. He’s sober enough. Hard for him to be anything else for he’s been in his bed the whole of the night.”
“Will you tell him, ma’am,” said Peter Walsh, “that there’s no boats in it only the Tortoise, and that one itself won’t be there for long for the wind’s easterly and it’s a fair run out to Inishbawn.”
Mrs. Sweeny repeated this message. Sweeny, roused to activity at last, flung off the bedclothes.