Nanny. Disgrace and torment on you! Whatever you got from me, it was more than any reward or any bit I ever got from the father you had, or any honourable thing at all, but only the hurt and the harm of the world and its shame!
Johnny B. What would he give you, and you going with him without leave? Crooked and foolish you were always, and you begging by the side of the ditch.
Nanny. Begging or sharing, the curse of my heart upon you! It's better off I was before ever I met with you, to my cost! What was on me at all that I did not cut a scourge in the wood to put manners and decency on you the time you were not hardened as you are!
Johnny B. Leave talking to me of your rods and your scourges! All you taught me was robbery, and it is on yourself and not on myself the scourges will be laid at the day of the recognition of tricks.
Paudeen. Faith, the pair of you together is better than Hector fighting before Troy!
Nanny. Ah, let you be quiet. It is not fighting we are craving, but the easing of the hunger that is on us and of the passion of sleep. Lend me a graineen of tobacco till I'll kindle my pipe—a blast of it will take the weight of the road off my heart.
[Andrew gives her some. Nanny. grabs at it.]
Biddy. No, but it's to myself you should give it. I that never smoked a pipe this forty year without saying the tobacco prayer. Let that one say, did ever she do that much?
Nanny. That the pain of your front tooth may be in your back tooth, you to be grabbing my share! [They snap at tobacco.]
Andrew. Pup, pup, pup. Don't be snapping and quarrelling now, and you so well treated in this house. It is strollers like yourselves should be for frolic and for fun. Have you ne'er a good song to sing, a song that will rise all our hearts?