[He goes up into the chapel.
SARAH
calling after him.—We will, and God preserve you, holy father.
MARY
coming down to them, speaking with amazement and consternation, but without anger.—Going to the chapel! It’s at marriage you’re fooling again, maybe? (Sarah turns her back on her.) It was for that you were washing your face, and you after sending me for porter at the fall of night the way I’d drink a good half from the jug? (Going round in front of Sarah.) Is it at marriage you’re fooling again?
SARAH
triumphantly.—It is, Mary Byrne. I’ll be married now in a short while; and from this day there will no one have a right to call me a dirty name and I selling cans in Wicklow or Wexford or the city of Dublin itself.
MARY
turning to Michael.—And it’s yourself is wedding her, Michael Byrne?
MICHAEL
gloomily.—It is, God spare us.
MARY
looks at Sarah for a moment, and then bursts out into a laugh of derision.—Well, she’s a tight, hardy girl, and it’s no lie; but I never knew till this day it was a black born fool I had for a son. You’ll breed asses, I’ve heard them say, and poaching dogs, and horses’d go licking the wind, but it’s a hard thing, God help me, to breed sense in a son.
MICHAEL
gloomily.—If I didn’t marry her, she’d be walking off to Jaunting Jim maybe at the fall of night; and it’s well yourself knows there isn’t the like of her for getting money and selling songs to the men.
MARY
And you’re thinking it’s paying gold to his reverence would make a woman stop when she’s a mind to go?
SARAH
angrily.—Let you not be destroying us with your talk when I’ve as good a right to a decent marriage as any speckled female does be sleeping in the black hovels above, would choke a mule.