"Do you remember that piece: and her sunny locks hang on her temples like a golden fleece?"
"No!"
"In the first act? When the young fellow, Bassanio, was telling Antonio about his girl in Belmont?"
His neighbour turned to him eagerly. "I wonder did they just put that bit in about Belmont," he said. "There's a place near Belfast called Belmont ... just beyond the Hollywood Arches there! Do you know it?" John shook his head. "I wouldn't be surprised but they just put that bit in to make it look more like the thing. What was the piece you were reciting?" John repeated it to him again. "What's the sense of that?" the boy exclaimed.
"Oh, don't you see? It's ... it's ..." He did not know how to explain the speech. "It's poetry," he said lamely.
"Oh" said the boy. "Portry. I see now. Ah, well, I suppose they have to fill up the piece some way! Do you think that woman, what's her name again?..."
"Portia?"
"Aye. D'you think she did live at Belmont? Some of them stories is true, you know, and there was quare things happened in the oul' ancient days in this neighbourhood, I can tell you. I wouldn't be surprised now!..."
But before he could say any more, the lights were lowered again, and there was a hushing sound, and then the play proceeded.
"Oh, isn't it grand?" John said to his neighbour when the trial scene was over.