MARIE BRUIN
They will not bring good luck into the house,
For they have blown the primroses away;
Yet I am glad that I was courteous to them,
For are not they, likewise, children of God?
FATHER HART
Colleen, they are the children of the fiend,
And they have power until the end of Time,
When God shall fight with them a great pitched battle
And hack them into pieces.
MARIE BRUIN
He will smile,
Father, perhaps, and open His great door,
And call the pretty and kind into His house.
FATHER HART
Did but the lawless angels see that door,
They would fall, slain by everlasting peace;
And when such angels knock upon our doors
Who goes with them must drive through the same storm.
(A knock at the door. MAIRE BRUIN opens it and then goes to the dresser and fills a porringer with milk and hands it through the door, and takes it back empty and closes the door.)
MARIE BRUIN
A little queer old woman cloaked in green,
Who came to beg a porringer of milk.
BRIDGET BRUIN
The good people go asking milk and fire
Upon May Eve—Woe on the house that gives,
For they have power upon it for a year.
I knew you would bring evil on the house.
MAURTEEN BRUIN
Who was she?
MARIE BRUIN
Both the tongue and face were strange.
MAURTEEN BRUIN
Some strangers came last week to Clover Hill;
She must be one of them.