Muskerry goes into the Select Ward.
CRIPES I'll tell you what brought Thomas Muskerry back to the workhouse to be an inmate in it. Living in a bad house. Living with his own. That's what brought him back. And that's what left me here, too.
SHANLEY (listlessly) The others have the flour, and we may hawk the bran.
An old pauper comes into the ward. His face looks bleached. He has the handle of a sweeping-brush for a staff. He moves about the ward, muttering to himself. He seats himself on chair, right.
THE OLD MAN (speaking as if thinking aloud) I was at twelve o'clock Mass. Now one o'clock would be a late Mass. I was at Mass at one o'clock. Wouldn't that be a long time to keep a priest, and he fasting the whole time?
CRIPES I'll tell you what Thomas Muskerry did when he left the bad house he was in. (He puts coal on the fire)
THE OLD MAN I was at one o'clock Mass in Skibbereen. I know where Skibbereen is well. In the County Cork. Cork is a big county. As big as Dublin and Wicklow. That's where the people died when there was the hunger.
CRIPES He came before the meeting of the Guardians, and he told them he owed them the whole of his year's pension. Then he got some sort of a stroke, and he broke down. And the Guardians gave him the Select Ward there for himself.
SHANLEY
They did well for him.
CRIPES Why wouldn't they give him the Select Ward? It's right that he'd get the little room, and not have to make down the pauper's bed with the rest of us.