ACT I
Scene: The kitchen in Damer's house. Outer door at back. Door leading to an inner room to right. A dresser, a table, and a couple of chairs. An old coat and hat hanging on the wall. A knocking is heard at door at back. It is unlatched from outside. Delia comes in.
Delia: (Looking round cautiously and going back to door.) You may come in, Staffy and Ralph. There would seem to be no person here.
Staffy: Take care would Damer ask us to cross the threshold at all. I would not ask to go pushing on him, but to wait till he would call to us himself. He is not an easy led man.
Delia: (Crossing and knocking at inner door.) He is not in it. He is likely slipped out unknownst.
Ralph: Herself that thought to find him at the brink of death and nearing his last leap, after what happened him with the jennet. We heard tell of it as far as we were.
Delia: What ailed him to go own a jennet, he that has means to stable a bay horse would set the windows rattling on the public road, and it sparkling over the flintstones after dark?
Staffy: Sure he owns no fourfooted beast only the dog abroad in its box. To make its way into the haggard the jennet did, the time it staggered him with a kick. To forage out some grazing it thought to do, beyond dirt and scutchgrass among the stones. Very cross jennets do be, as it is a cross man it met with.
Delia: A queer sort of a brother he is. To go searching Ireland you wouldn't find queerer. But as soon as I got word what happened I bade Ralph to put the tacklings on the ass. We must have nature about us some way. There was silence between us long enough.
Ralph: She was thinking it might be the cause of him getting his death sooner than God has it promised to him, and that it might turn his mind more friendly like towards us, he knowing us to be at hand for to settle out his burying.