. Let her keep her fortune. I wouldn't touch her with the
tongs if she had thousands and millions.

MRS O'FLAHERTY. Oh fie for shame, Dinny! why would you say the like of
that of a decent honest girl, and one of the Driscolls too?

O'FLAHERTY. Why wouldn't I say it? She's thinking of nothing but to get
me out there again to be wounded so that she may spend my pension, bad
scran to her!

MRS O'FLAHERTY. Why, what's come over you, child, at all at all?

O'FLAHERTY. Knowledge and wisdom has come over me with pain and fear
and trouble. I've been made a fool of and imposed upon all my life. I
thought that covetious sthreal in there was a walking angel; and now if
ever I marry at all I'll marry a Frenchwoman.

MRS O'FLARERTY [fiercely]. You'll not, so; and don't you dar repeat such
a thing to me.

O'FLAHERTY. Won't I, faith! I've been as good as married to a couple of
them already.

MRS O'FLAHERTY. The Lord be praised, what wickedness have you been up
to, you young blackguard?

O'FLAHERTY. One of them Frenchwomen would cook you a meal twice in the
day and all days and every day that Sir Pearce himself might go begging
through Ireland for, and never see the like of. I'll have a French wife,
I tell you; and when I settle down to be a farmer I'll have a French
farm, with a field as big as the continent of Europe that ten of your
dirty little fields here wouldn't so much as fill the ditch of.

MRS O'FLAHERTY [furious]. Then it's a French mother you may go look for;
for I'm done with you.

O'FLAHERTY. And it's no great loss you'd be if it wasn't for my natural
feelings for you; for it's only a silly ignorant old countrywoman you
are with all your fine talk about Ireland: you that never stepped beyond
the few acres of it you were born on!

MRS O'FLAHERTY [tottering to the garden seat and showing signs of
breaking down]. Dinny darlint, why are you like this to me? What's
happened to you?

O'FLAHERTY [gloomily]. What's happened to everybody? that's what I want
to know. What's happened to you that I thought all the world of and was
afeard of? What's happened to Sir Pearce, that I thought was a great
general, and that I now see to be no more fit to command an army than an
old hen? What's happened to Tessie, that I was mad to marry a year ago,
and that I wouldn't take now with all Ireland for her fortune? I tell
you the world's creation is crumbling in ruins about me; and then you
come and ask what's happened to me?

MR