Delia: (Looking at dresser.) Spiders' webs heaped in ridges the same as windrows in a bleach of hay. What now is that there above on the upper shelf?
Ralph: (Taking it from top shelf.) It is but a pack of cards.
Staffy: They should maybe be the very same that brought him profit in his wild days. He always had a lucky hand.
Delia: (Dusting them.) You would give your seven oaths the dust to have been gathering on them since the time of the Hebrews' Flood. I'll tell you now a thing to do. We being here before him in the house, why wouldn't we ready it and put some sort of face upon it, the way he would be in humour with us coming in.
Ralph: And the way he might incline to put into our hand some good promise or some gift.
Delia: (Dusting.) I would wish no gift from any person at all, but that my mind is set at this time on a fleet of white goats and a guinea-hen are to be canted out from the Spanish woman at Lisatuwna cross by reason of the hanging gale.
Staffy: That was the way with you, Delia, from the time you could look out from the half-door, to be coveting pictures and fooleries, that would shape themselves in your mind.
Delia: There is no sin coveting things are of no great use or profit, but would show out good and have some grandeur around them. Those goats now! Browsing on the blossoms of the bushes they would be, or the herbs that give out a sweet smell. Stir yourself, Staffy, and throw your eye on that turf beyond in the corner. It is that wet you could wring from it splashes and streams. Let you rise the ashes from the sods are on the hearth and redden them with a goosewing, if there is a goosewing to be found. There is no greater beauty to be met with than the leaping of a little yellow flame.
Staffy: In my opinion there will no pay-day come for this work, but only a thank-you job; a County Clare payment, 'God spare you the health!'
Delia: Let you do it, Ralph so. (Takes potatoes from a sieve.) A roasted potato would be a nice thing to put before him, in the place of this old crust of a loaf. Put them in now around the sods, the way they will be crispy before him.