THE JACKDAW
Scene: Interior of a small general shop at Cloon. Mrs. Broderick sitting down. Tommy Nally sitting eating an orange Sibby has given him. Sibby, with basket on her arm, is looking out of door.
Sibby: The people are gathering to the door of the Court. The Magistrates will be coming there before long. Here is Timothy Ward coming up the street.
Timothy Ward: (Coming to door.) Did you get that summons I left here for you ere yesterday, Mrs. Broderick?
Mrs. Broderick: I believe it’s there in under the canister. (Takes it out.) It had my mind tossed looking at it there before me. I know well what is in it if I made no fist of reading it itself. It’s no wonder with all I had to go through if the reading and writing got scattered on me.
Ward: You know it is on this day you have to appear in the Court?
Mrs. Broderick: It isn’t easy to forget that, though indeed it is hard for me to be keeping anything in my head these times, but maybe remembering to-morrow the thing I was saying to-day.
Ward: Up to one o’clock the magistrates will be able to attend to you, ma’am, before they will go out eating their meal.
Mrs. Broderick: Haven’t I the mean, begrudging creditors now that would put me into the Court? Sure it’s a terrible thing to go in it and to be bound to speak nothing but the truth. When people would meet with you after, they would remember your face in the Court. What way would they be certain was it in or outside of the dock?