Mrs. Fallon: Never fear, Bartley Fallon, but I’ll give you a good burying the day you’ll die.
Bartley: Maybe it’s yourself will be buried in the graveyard of Cloonmara before me, Mary Fallon, and I myself that will be dying unbeknownst some night, and no one a-near me. And the cat itself may be gone straying through the country, and the mice squealing over the quilt.
Mrs. Fallon: Leave off talking of dying. It might be twenty years you’ll be living yet.
Bartley: (With a deep sigh.) I’m thinking if I’ll be living at the end of twenty years, it’s a very old man I’ll be then!
Mrs. Tarpey: (Turns and sees them.) Good morrow, Bartley Fallon; good morrow, Mrs. Fallon. Well, Bartley, you’ll find no cause for complaining to-day; they are all saying it was a good fair.
Bartley: (Raising his voice.) It was not a good fair, Mrs. Tarpey. It was a scattered sort of a fair. If we didn’t expect more, we got less. That’s the way with me always; whatever I have to sell goes down and whatever I have to buy goes up. If there’s ever any misfortune coming to this world, it’s on myself it pitches, like a flock of crows on seed potatoes.
Mrs. Fallon: Leave off talking of misfortunes, and listen to Jack Smith that is coming the way, and he singing.
(Voice of Jack Smith heard singing:)
I thought, my first love,
There’d be but one house between you and me,