for thatching, or mowing, or shearing a
sheep.

PEGEEN -- [with noisy scorn.] -- It's true the Lord God formed you to
contrive indeed. Doesn't the world know you reared a black lamb at your
own breast, so that the Lord Bishop of Connaught felt the elements of
a Christian, and he eating it after in a kidney stew? Doesn't the
world know you've been seen shaving the foxy skipper from France for a
threepenny bit and a sop of grass tobacco would wring the liver from a
mountain goat you'd meet leaping the hills?

WIDOW QUIN -- [with amusement.] -- Do you hear her now, young fellow? Do
you hear the way she'll be rating at your own self when a week is by?

PEGEEN -- [to Christy.] -- Don't heed her. Tell her to go into her
pigsty and not plague us here.

WIDOW QUIN. I'm going; but he'll come with me.

PEGEEN -- [shaking him.] -- Are you dumb, young fellow?

CHRISTY -- [timidly, to Widow Quin.] -- God increase you; but I'm
pot-boy in this place, and it's here I'd liefer stay.

PEGEEN -- [triumphantly.] Now you have heard him, and go on from this.

WIDOW QUIN -- [looking round the room.] -- It's lonesome this hour
crossing the hill, and if he won't come along with me, I'd have a right
maybe to stop this night with yourselves. Let me stretch out on the
settle, Pegeen Mike; and himself can lie by the hearth.

PEGEEN -- [short and fiercely.] -- Faith, I won't. Quit off or I will
send you now.

WIDOW QUIN -- [gathering her shawl up.] -- Well, it's a terror to be
aged a score. (To Christy.) God bless you now, young fellow, and let
you be wary, or there's right torment will await you here if you go
romancing with her like, and she waiting only, as they bade me say, on a
sheepskin parchment to be wed with Shawn Keogh of Killakeen.

CHRISTY -- [going to Pegeen as she bolts the door.] -- What's that she's
after saying?

PEGEEN. Lies and blather, you've no call to mind. Well, isn't Shawn
Keogh an impudent fellow to send up spying on me? Wait till I lay hands
on him. Let him wait, I'm saying.

CHRISTY. And you're not wedding him at all?

PEGEEN. I wouldn't wed him if a bishop came walking for to join us here.

CHRISTY. That God in glory may be thanked for that.

PEGEEN. There's your bed now. I've put a quilt upon you I'm after
quilting a while since with my own two hands, and you'd best stretch out
now for your sleep, and may God give you a good rest till I call you in
the morning when the cocks will crow.

CHRISTY -- [a