Paul Ruttledge. I suppose you have your troubles like others. But you seem cheerful enough.
Charlie Ward. It isn't anything to fret about. Some of us go soon, and some travel the roads for their lifetime. What does it matter when we are under the nettles if it was with a short rope or a long one we were hanged?
Paul Ruttledge. Yes, that is the way to take life. What does the length of our rope matter?
Charlie Ward. We haven't time to be thinking of troubles like people that would be shut up in a house. We have the wide world before us to make our living out of. The people of the whole world are begrudging us our living, and we make it out of them for all that. When they will spread currant cakes and feather beds before us, it will be time for us to sit down and fret.
Tommy the Song. It's likely you'll think the life too hard. Would you like to be passing by houses in the night-time, and the fire shining out of them, and you hardly given the loan of a sod to light your pipe, and the rain falling on you?
Paul Ruttledge. Why are the people so much against you?
Tommy the Song. We are not like themselves. It's little we care about them or they about us. If their saint did curse us itself——
Charlie Ward. Stop. I won't have you talking about that story here. Why would they think so much of the curse of one saint, and saints so plenty?
Paddy Cockfight. Where's the good of a gentleman being here? He'll be breaking down on the road. It's on the ass-cart he'll be wanting to sit.
Tommy the Song. Indeed, I don't think he'll stand the hardship.