e rear wall, a window
opening on the side porch. To the right of this, a china cupboard,
and a door leading into the hall where the main front entrance to
the house and the stairs to the floor above are situated. On the
right, to the rear, a door opening on to the dining room. Further
forward, the kitchen range with scuttle, wood box, etc. In the
centre of the room, a table with a red and white cloth. Four
cane-bottomed chairs are pushed under the table. In front of the
stove, two battered wicker rocking chairs. The floor is partly
covered by linoleum strips. The walls are papered a light cheerful
colour. Several old framed picture-supplement prints hang from
nails. Everything has a clean, neatly-kept appearance. The supper
dishes are piled in the sink ready for washing. A saucepan of water
simmers on the stove._

_It is about eight o'clock in the evening of a bitter cold day in
late February of the year 1912._

_As the curtain rises,_ Bill Carmody _is discovered fitting in a
rocker by the stove, reading a newspaper and smoking a blackened
clay pipe. He is a man of fifty, heavy-set and round-shouldered,
with long muscular arms and swollen-veined, hairy hands. His face
is bony and ponderous; his nose short and squat; his mouth large,
thick-lipped and harsh; his complexion mottled--red, purple-streaked,
and freckled; his hair, short and stubby with a bald spot on the
crown. The expression of his small, blue eyes is one of selfish
cunning. His voice is loud and hoarse. He wears a flannel shirt,
open at the neck, criss-crossed by red braces; black, baggy
trousers grey with dust; muddy brogues._

_His youngest daughter,_ Mary, _is sitting on a chair by the table,
front, turning over the pages of a picture book. She is a delicate,
dark-haired, blue-eyed, quiet little girl about eight years old._

CARMODY (_after watching the child's preoccupation for a moment, in a
tone of half exasperated amusement_). Well, but you're the quiet one,
surely! (_Mary looks up at him with a shy smile, her eyes still full of
dreams._) Glory be to God, I'd not know a soul was alive in the room,
barrin' myself. What is it you're at, Mary, that there's not a word out
of you?

MARY. I'm looking at the pictures.

CARMODY. It's the dead spit and image of your sister Eileen you are,
with your nose always in a book; and you're like y