MICHAEL.
slapping him on the back.—Well, aren’t you a hardened slayer? It’ll be a poor thing for the household man where you go sniffing for a female wife; and (pointing to Shawn) look beyond at that shy and decent Christian I have chosen for my daughter’s hand, and I after getting the gilded dispensation this day for to wed them now.
CHRISTY.
And you’ll be wedding them this day, is it?
MICHAEL.
drawing himself up.—Aye. Are you thinking, if I’m drunk itself, I’d leave my daughter living single with a little frisky rascal is the like of you?
PEGEEN.
breaking away from Shawn.—Is it the truth the dispensation’s come?
MICHAEL.
triumphantly.—Father Reilly’s after reading it in gallous Latin, and “It’s come in the nick of time,” says he; “so I’ll wed them in a hurry, dreading that young gaffer who’d capsize the stars.”
PEGEEN.
fiercely.—He’s missed his nick of time, for it’s that lad, Christy Mahon, that I’m wedding now.
MICHAEL.
loudly with horror.—You’d be making him a son to me, and he wet and crusted with his father’s blood?
PEGEEN.
Aye. Wouldn’t it be a bitter thing for a girl to go marrying the like of Shaneen, and he a middling kind of a scarecrow, with no savagery or fine words in him at all?
MICHAEL.
gasping and sinking on a chair.—Oh, aren’t you a heathen daughter to go shaking the fat of my heart, and I swamped and drownded with the weight of drink? Would you have them turning on me the way that I’d be roaring to the dawn of day with the wind upon my heart? Have you not a word to aid me, Shaneen? Are you not jealous at all?
SHANEEN.
In great misery.—I’d be afeard to be jealous of a man did slay his da.