Mrs. Donohoe. It is so. He left all to myself. But it is a lonesome thing the head of a house to have died!
Mike McInerney. I hope that he has left you a nice way of living?
Mrs. Donohoe. Fair enough, fair enough. A wide lovely house I have; a few acres of grass land ... the grass does be very sweet that grows among the stones. And as to the sea, there is something from it every day of the year, a handful of periwinkles to make kitchen, or cockles maybe. There is many a thing in the sea is not decent, but cockles is fit to put before the Lord!
Mike McInerney. You have all that! And you without e'er a man in the house?
Mrs. Donohoe. It is what I am thinking, yourself might come and keep me company. It is no credit to me a brother of my own to be in this place at all.
Mike McInerney. I'll go with you! Let me out of this! It is the name of the McInerneys will be rising on every side!
Mrs. Donohoe. I don't know. I was ignorant of you being kept to the bed.
Mike McInerney. I am not kept to it, but maybe an odd time when there is a colic rises up within me. My stomach always gets better the time there is a change in the moon. I'd like well to draw anear you. My heavy blessing on you, Honor Donohoe, for the hand you have held out to me this day.
Mrs. Donohoe. Sure you could be keeping the fire in, and stirring the pot with the bit of Indian meal for the hens, and milking the goat and taking the tacklings off the donkey at the door; and maybe putting out the cabbage plants in their time. For when the old man died the garden died.
Mike McInerney. I could to be sure, and be cutting the potatoes for seed. What luck could there be in a place and a man not to be in it? Is that now a suit of clothes you have brought with you?