et you give him a good vengeance
when you come up with him, but don't put yourself in the power of the
law, for it'd be a poor thing to see a judge in his black cap reading
out his sentence on a civil warrior the like of you. [She swings the
door to and looks at Christy, who is cowering in terror, for a moment,
then she bursts into a laugh.]

WIDOW QUIN. Well, you're the walking Playboy of the Western World, and
that's the poor man you had divided to his breeches belt.

CHRISTY -- [looking out: then, to her.] -- What'll Pegeen say when she
hears that story? What'll she be saying to me now?

WIDOW QUIN. She'll knock the head of you, I'm thinking, and drive you
from the door. God help her to be taking you for a wonder, and you a
little schemer making up the story you destroyed your da.

CHRISTY -- [turning to the door, nearly speechless with rage, half to
himself.] -- To be letting on he was dead, and coming back to his life,
and following after me like an old weazel tracing a rat, and coming
in here laying desolation between my own self and the fine women of
Ireland, and he a kind of carcase that you'd fling upon the sea...

WIDOW QUIN -- [more soberly.] -- There's talking for a man's one only
son.

CHRISTY -- [breaking out.] -- His one son, is it? May I meet him with
one tooth and it aching, and one eye to be seeing seven and seventy
divils in the twists of the road, and one old timber leg on him to limp
into the scalding grave. (Looking out.) There he is now crossing the
strands, and that the Lord God would send a high wave to wash him from
the world.

WIDOW QUIN -- [scandalised.] Have you no shame? (putting her hand on his
shoulder and turning him round.) What ails you? Near crying, is it?

CHRISTY -- [in despair and grief.] -- Amn't I after seeing the
love-light of the star of knowledge shining from her brow, and hearing
words would put you thinking on the holy Brigid speaking to the infant
saints, and now she'll be turning again, and speaking hard words to me,
like an old woman with a spavindy ass she'd have, urging on a hill.

WIDOW QUIN. There's poetry talk for a girl you'd see itching and
scratching, and she with a stale stink of poteen on her from selling in
the shop.

CHRISTY -- [impatiently.] It's her like is fitted to be handling
merchandise in the heavens above, and what'll I be doing now, I ask
you, and I a kind of wonder was jilted by the heavens when a day was by.
[There is a distant noise of