[She puts the can in the ditch.
MARY
sleepily.—I’ve a grand story of the great queens of Ireland with white necks on them the like of Sarah Casey, and fine arms would hit you a slap the way Sarah Casey would hit you.
SARAH
beckoning on the left.—Come along now, Michael, while she’s falling asleep.
[He goes towards left. Mary sees that they are going, starts up suddenly, and turns over on her hands and knees.
MARY
piteously.—Where is it you’re going? Let you walk back here, and not be leaving me lonesome when the night is fine.
SARAH
Don’t be waking the world with your talk when we’re going up through the back wood to get two of Tim Flaherty’s hens are roosting in the ash-tree above at the well.
MARY
And it’s leaving me lone you are? Come back here, Sarah Casey. Come back here, I’m saying; or if it’s off you must go, leave me the two little coppers you have, the way I can walk up in a short while, and get another pint for my sleep.
SARAH
It’s too much you have taken. Let you stretch yourself out and take a long sleep; for isn’t that the best thing any woman can do, and she an old drinking heathen like yourself.
[She and Michael go out left.
MARY
standing up slowly.—It’s gone they are, and I with my feet that weak under me you’d knock me down with a rush, and my head with a noise in it the like of what you’d hear in a stream and it running between two rocks and rain falling. (She goes over to the ditch where the can is tied in sacking, and takes it down.) What good am I this night, God help me? What good are the grand stories I have when it’s few would listen to an old woman, few but a girl maybe would be in great fear the time her hour was come, or a little child wouldn’t be sleeping with the hunger on a cold night? (She takes the can from the sacking and fits in three empty bottles and straw in its place, and ties them up.) Maybe the two of them have a good right to be walking out the little short while they’d be young; but if they have itself, they’ll not keep Mary Byrne from her full pint when the night’s fine, and there’s a dry moon in the sky. (She takes up the can, and puts the package back in the ditch.) Jemmy Neill’s a decent lad; and he’ll give me a good drop for the can; and maybe if I keep near the peelers to-morrow for the first bit of the fair, herself won’t strike me at all; and if she does itself, what’s a little stroke on your head beside sitting lonesome on a fine night, hearing the dogs barking, and the bats squeaking, and you saying over, it’s a short while only till you die.