MICHAEL
She’ll be crying out now, and making game of us, and saying it’s fools we are surely.
SARAH
I’ll send her to sleep again, or get her out of it one way or another; for it’d be a bad case to have a divil’s scholar the like of her turning the priest against us maybe with her godless talk.
MARY
waking up, and looking at them with curiosity, blandly.—That’s fine things you have on you, Sarah Casey; and it’s a great stir you’re making this day, washing your face. I’m that used to the hammer, I wouldn’t hear it at all, but washing is a rare thing, and you’re after waking me up, and I having a great sleep in the sun.
[She looks around cautiously at the bundle in which she has hidden the bottles.
SARAH
coaxingly.—Let you stretch out again for a sleep, Mary Byrne, for it’ll be a middling time yet before we go to the fair.
MARY
with suspicion.—That’s a sweet tongue you have, Sarah Casey; but if sleep’s a grand thing, it’s a grand thing to be waking up a day the like of this, when there’s a warm sun in it, and a kind air, and you’ll hear the cuckoos singing and crying out on the top of the hills.
SARAH
If it’s that gay you are, you’d have a right to walk down and see would you get a few halfpence from the rich men do be driving early to the fair.
MARY
When rich men do be driving early, it’s queer tempers they have, the Lord forgive them; the way it’s little but bad words and swearing out you’d get from them all.
SARAH
losing her temper and breaking out fiercely.—Then if you’ll neither beg nor sleep, let you walk off from this place where you’re not wanted, and not have us waiting for you maybe at the turn of day.
MARY
rather uneasy, turning to Michael.—God help our spirits, Michael; there she is again rousing cranky from the break of dawn. Oh! isn’t she a terror since the moon did change? (She gets up slowly.) And I’d best be going forward to sell the gallon can.