y'd give us a thing at all. (She sits down.) It's well you know that,
but you must be talking.

MARTIN DOUL -- [sitting down beside her and beginning to shred rushes
she gives him.] -- If I didn't talk I'd be destroyed in a short while
listening to the clack you do be making, for you've a queer cracked
voice, the Lord have mercy on you, if it's fine to look on you are
itself.

MARY DOUL. Who wouldn't have a cracked voice sitting out all the year
in the rain falling? It's a bad life for the voice, Martin Doul, though
I've heard tell there isn't anything like the wet south wind does be
blowing upon us for keeping a white beautiful skin -- the like of my
skin -- on your neck and on your brows, and there isn't anything at all
like a fine skin for putting splendour on a woman.

MARTIN DOUL -- [teasingly, but with good humour.] -- I do be thinking
odd times we don't know rightly what way you have your splendour, or
asking myself, maybe, if you have it at all, for the time I was a young
lad, and had fine sight, it was the ones with sweet voices were the best
in face.

MARY DOUL. Let you not be making the like of that talk when you've heard
Timmy the smith, and Mat Simon, and Patch Ruadh, and a power besides
saying fine things of my face, and you know rightly it was "the
beautiful dark woman" they did call me in Ballinatone.

MARTIN DOUL -- [as before.] -- If it was itself I heard Molly Byrne
saying at the fall of night it was little more than a fright you were.

MARY DOUL -- [sharply.] -- She was jealous, God forgive her, because
Timmy the smith was after praising my hair.

MARTIN DOUL -- [with mock irony.] -- Jealous!

MARY DOUL. Ay, jealous, Martin Doul; and if she wasn't itself, the young
and silly do be always making game of them that's dark, and they'd think
it a fine thing if they had us deceived, the way we wouldn't know we
were so fine-looking at all.

[She puts her hand to her face with a complacent gesture.]

MARTIN DOUL -- [a little plaintively.] -- I do be thinking in the long
nights it'd be a grand thing if we could see ourselves for one hour, or
a minute itself, the way we'd know surely we were the finest man and the
finest woman of the seven counties of the east (bitterly) and then the
seeing rabble below might be destroying their souls telling bad lies,
and we'd never heed a thing they'd say.

MARY DOUL. If you weren't a big fool you wouldn't heed them this hour,
Martin Doul, for they're a bad lot