WIDOW QUIN.
There’s harvest hundreds do be passing these days for the Sligo boat. For what is it you’re wanting him, my poor man?
MAHON.
I want to destroy him for breaking the head on me with the clout of a loy. (He takes off a big hat, and shows his head in a mass of bandages and plaster, with some pride.) It was he did that, and amn’t I a great wonder to think I’ve traced him ten days with that rent in my crown?
WIDOW QUIN.
taking his head in both hands and examining it with extreme delight.—That was a great blow. And who hit you? A robber maybe?
MAHON.
It was my own son hit me, and he the divil a robber, or anything else, but a dirty, stuttering lout.
WIDOW QUIN.
letting go his skull and wiping her hands in her apron.—You’d best be wary of a mortified scalp, I think they call it, lepping around with that wound in the splendour of the sun. It was a bad blow surely, and you should have vexed him fearful to make him strike that gash in his da.
MAHON.
Is it me?
WIDOW QUIN.
amusing herself.—Aye. And isn’t it a great shame when the old and hardened do torment the young?
MAHON.
raging.—Torment him is it? And I after holding out with the patience of a martyred saint till there’s nothing but destruction on, and I’m driven out in my old age with none to aid me.
WIDOW QUIN.
greatly amused.—It’s a sacred wonder the way that wickedness will spoil a man.
MAHON.
My wickedness, is it? Amn’t I after saying it is himself has me destroyed, and he a liar on walls, a talker of folly, a man you’d see stretched the half of the day in the brown ferns with his belly to the sun.