d he astride the
moon. [He jumps down and makes for the door, but Widow Quin catches him
and pulls him back.]

WIDOW QUIN. Stay quiet, will you. That's not your son. (To Jimmy.) Stop
him, or you'll get a month for the abetting of manslaughter and be fined
as well.

JIMMY. I'll hold him.

MAHON [struggling.] Let me out! Let me out, the lot of you! till I have
my vengeance on his head to-day.

WIDOW QUIN -- [shaking him, vehemently.] -- That's not your son. That's
a man is going to make a marriage with the daughter of this house, a
place with fine trade, with a license, and with poteen too.

MAHON -- [amazed.] That man marrying a decent and a moneyed girl! Is it
mad yous are? Is it in a crazy-house for females that I'm landed now?

WIDOW QUIN. It's mad yourself is with the blow upon your head. That lad
is the wonder of the Western World.

MAHON. I seen it's my son.

WIDOW QUIN. You seen that you're mad. (Cheering outside.) Do you hear
them cheering him in the zig-zags of the road? Aren't you after saying
that your son's a fool, and how would they be cheering a true idiot
born?

MAHON -- [getting distressed.] -- It's maybe out of reason that that
man's himself. (Cheering again.) There's none surely will go cheering
him. Oh, I'm raving with a madness that would fright the world! (He sits
down with his hand to his head.) There was one time I seen ten scarlet
divils letting on they'd cork my spirit in a gallon can; and one time I
seen rats as big as badgers sucking the life blood from the butt of
my lug; but I never till this day confused that dribbling idiot with a
likely man. I'm destroyed surely.

WIDOW QUIN. And who'd wonder when it's your brain-pan that is gaping
now?

MAHON. Then the blight of the sacred drought upon myself and him, for
I never went mad to this day, and I not three weeks with the Limerick
girls drinking myself silly, and parlatic from the dusk to dawn. (To
Widow Quin, suddenly.) Is my visage astray?

WIDOW QUIN. It is then. You're a sniggering maniac, a child could see.

MAHON -- [getting up more cheerfully.] -- Then I'd best be going to
the union beyond, and there'll be a welcome before me, I tell you (with
great pride), and I a terrible and fearful case, the way that there I
was one time, screeching in a straightened waistcoat, with seven doctors
writing out my sayings in a printed book. Would you believe that?

WIDOW QUIN. If you're a wonder itself, you'd best be hasty, for them
la