MARTIN DOUL.
Grand day, is it? (Plaintively again, throwing aside his work, and leaning towards her.) Or a bad black day when I was roused up and found I was the like of the little children do be listening to the stories of an old woman, and do be dreaming after in the dark night that it’s in grand houses of gold they are, with speckled horses to ride, and do be waking again, in a short while, and they destroyed with the cold, and the thatch dripping, maybe, and the starved ass braying in the yard?
MOLLY BYRNE.
working indifferently. — You’ve great romancing this day, Martin Doul. Was it up at the still you were at the fall of night?
MARTIN DOUL.
stands up, comes towards her, but stands at far (right) side of well. — It was not, Molly Byrne, but lying down in a little rickety shed.... Lying down across a sop of straw, and I thinking I was seeing you walk, and hearing the sound of your step on a dry road, and hearing you again, and you laughing and making great talk in a high room with dry timber lining the roof. For it’s a fine sound your voice has that time, and it’s better I am, I’m thinking, lying down, the way a blind man does be lying, than to be sitting here in the gray light taking hard words of Timmy the smith.
MOLLY BYRNE.
looking at him with interest. — It’s queer talk you have if it’s a little, old, shabby stump of a man you are itself.
MARTIN DOUL.
I’m not so old as you do hear them say.
MOLLY BYRNE.
You’re old, I’m thinking, to be talking that talk with a girl.
MARTIN DOUL.
despondingly. — It’s not a lie you’re telling, maybe, for it’s long years I’m after losing from the world, feeling love and talking love, with the old woman, and I fooled the whole while with the lies of Timmy the smith.
MOLLY BYRNE.
half invitingly. — It’s a fine way you’re wanting to pay Timmy the smith.... And it’s not his lies you’re making love to this day, Martin Doul.
MARTIN DOUL.
It is not, Molly, and the Lord forgive us all. (He passes behind her and comes near her left.) For I’ve heard tell there are lands beyond in Cahir Iveraghig and the Reeks of Cork with warm sun in them, and fine light in the sky. (Bending towards her.) And light’s a grand thing for a man ever was blind, or a woman, with a fine neck, and a skin on her the like of you, the way we’d have a right to go off this day till we’d have a fine life passing abroad through them towns of the south, and we telling stories, maybe, or singing songs at the fairs.
MOLLY BYRNE.
turning round half amused, and looking him over from head to foot. — Well, isn’t it a queer thing when your own wife’s after leaving you because you’re a pitiful show, you’d talk the like of that to me?