SARA.
exuberantly.—That’s right, Widow Quin. I’ll bet my dowry that he’ll lick the world.
WIDOW QUIN.
If you will, you’d have a right to have him fresh and nourished in place of nursing a feast. (Taking presents.) Are you fasting or fed, young fellow?
CHRISTY.
Fasting, if you please.
WIDOW QUIN.
loudly.—Well, you’re the lot. Stir up now and give him his breakfast. (To Christy.) Come here to me (she puts him on bench beside her while the girls make tea and get his breakfast) and let you tell us your story before Pegeen will come, in place of grinning your ears off like the moon of May.
CHRISTY.
beginning to be pleased.—It’s a long story; you’d be destroyed listening.
WIDOW QUIN.
Don’t be letting on to be shy, a fine, gamey, treacherous lad the like of you. Was it in your house beyond you cracked his skull?
CHRISTY.
shy but flattered.—It was not. We were digging spuds in his cold, sloping, stony, divil’s patch of a field.
WIDOW QUIN.
And you went asking money of him, or making talk of getting a wife would drive him from his farm?
CHRISTY.
I did not, then; but there I was, digging and digging, and “You squinting idiot,” says he, “let you walk down now and tell the priest you’ll wed the Widow Casey in a score of days.”
WIDOW QUIN.
And what kind was she?