NANNY. If he had, he had a mother to come to, and he would know her
when he did see her, and that is what no son of your own could do, and
he to meet you at the foot of the gallows!

JOHNNY B. If I did know you, I knew too much of you since the first
beginning of my life! What reward did I ever get travelling with you?
What store did you give me of cattle or of goods? What provision did I
get from you by day or by night but your own bad character to be joined
on to my own, and I following at your heels, and your bags tied round
about me?

NANNY. Disgrace and torment on you! Whatever you got from me, it was
more than any reward or any bit I ever got from the father you had, or
any honourable thing at all, but only the hurt and the harm of the
world and its shame!

JOHNNY B. What would he give you, and you going with him without leave?
Crooked and foolish you were always, and you begging by the side of the
ditch.

NANNY. Begging or sharing, the curse of my heart upon you! It's better
off I was before ever I met with you, to my cost! What was on me at all
that I did not cut a scourge in the wood to put manners and decency on
you the time you were not hardened as you are!

JOHNNY B. Leave talking to me of your rods and your scourges! All you
taught me was robbery, and it is on yourself and not on myself the
scourges will be laid at the day of the recognition of tricks.

PAUDEEN. Faith, the pair of you together is better than Hector fighting
before Troy!

NANNY. Ah, let you be quiet. It is not fighting we are craving, but the
easing of the hunger that is on us and of the passion of sleep. Lend me
a graineen of tobacco till I'll kindle my pipe--a blast of it will take
the weight of the road off my heart.

[ANDREW _gives her some_. NANNY. _grabs at it._]

BIDDY. No, but it's to myself you should give it. I that never smoked a
pipe this forty year without saying the tobacco prayer. Let that one
say, did ever she do that much?

NANNY. That the pain of your front tooth may be in your back tooth, you
to be grabbing my share! [_They snap at tobacco._]

ANDREW. Pup, pup, pup. Don't be snapping and quarrelling now, and you
so well treated in this house. It is strollers like yourselves should
be for frolic and for fun. Have you ne'er a good song to sing, a song
that will rise all our hearts?

PAUDEEN. Johnny Bacach is a good singer; it is what he used to be doing
in the fairs, if the oakum of the gaol did not