is troubled about you. [_To_ THOMAS _as
he and_ ANDREW _come in._] Here he is; be very kind to him, for he has
still the weakness of a little child.

[_Goes out._]

THOMAS. Are you well of the fit, lad?

MARTIN. It was no fit. I was away ... for a while ... no, you will not
believe me if I tell you.

ANDREW. I would believe it, Martin. I used to have very long sleeps
myself and very queer dreams.

THOMAS. You had, till I cured you, taking you in hand and binding you
to the hours of the clock. The cure that will cure yourself, Martin,
and will waken you, is to put the whole of your mind on to your golden
coach, to take it in hand, and to finish it out of face.

MARTIN. Not just now. I want to think ... to try and remember what I
saw, something that I heard, that I was told to do.

THOMAS. No, but put it out of your mind. There is no man doing business
that can keep two things in his head. A Sunday or a Holyday now you
might go see a good hurling or a thing of the kind, but to be spreading
out your mind on anything outside of the workshop on common days, all
coach building would come to an end.

MARTIN. I don't think it is building I want to do. I don't think that
is what was in the command.

THOMAS. It is too late to be saying that the time you have put the most
of your fortune in the business. Set yourself now to finish your job,
and when it is ended, maybe I won't begrudge you going with the coach
as far as Dublin.

ANDREW. That is it; that will satisfy him. I had a great desire myself,
and I young, to go travelling the roads as far as Dublin. The roads are
the great things; they never come to an end. They are the same as the
serpent having his tail swallowed in his own mouth.

MARTIN. It was not wandering I was called to. What was it? What was it?

THOMAS. What you are called to, and what everyone having no great
estate is called to, is to work. Sure the world itself could not go on
without work.

MARTIN. I wonder if that is the great thing, to make the world go on.
No, I don't think that is the great thing ... what does the Munster
poet call it ... "this crowded slippery coach-loving world." I don't
think I was told to work for that.

ANDREW. I often thought that myself. It is a pity the stock of the
Hearnes to be asked to do any work at all.

THOMAS. Rouse yourself, Martin, and don't be talking the way a fool
talks. You started making that golden coach, and you were set upon it,
and yo