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.
And I thought I would find
Yourself coaxing my child on your knee.
Over the tide
I would leap with the leap of a swan.
Till I came to the side
Of the wife of the red-haired man!
(JACK SMITH comes in; he is a red-haired man, and is carrying a hayfork.)
MRS. TARPEY. That should be a good song if I had my hearing.
MRS. FALLON (shouting). It's "The Red-haired Man's Wife."
MRS. TARPEY. I know it well. That's the song that has a skin on it!