I wonder if that is the great thing, to make the world go on? No, I don’t think that is the great thing—what does the Munster poet call it?—‘this crowded slippery coach-loving world.’ I don’t think I was told to work for that.
ANDREW.
I often thought that myself. It is a pity the stock of the Hearnes to be asked to do any work at all.
THOMAS.
Rouse yourself, Martin, and don’t be talking the way a fool talks. You started making that golden coach, and you were set upon it, and you had me tormented about it. You have yourself wore out working at it, and planning it, and thinking of it, and at the end of the race, when you have the winning-post in sight, and horses hired for to bring it to Dublin Castle, you go falling into sleeps and blathering about dreams, and we run to a great danger of letting the profit and the sale go by. Sit down on the bench now, and lay your hands to the work.
MARTIN [sitting down].
I will try. I wonder why I ever wanted to make it; it was no good dream set me doing that. [He takes up wheel.] What is there in a wooden wheel to take pleasure in it? Gilding it outside makes it no different.
THOMAS.
That is right, now. You had some good plan for making the axle run smooth.
MARTIN.
[Letting wheel fall and putting his hands to his head.]