ses
red, the like of your nose, and their eyes weeping and watering, the
like of your eyes, God help you, Timmy the smith.

TIMMY -- [seen blinking in doorway.] -- Is it turning now you are
against your sight?

MARTIN DOUL -- [very miserably.] -- It's a hard thing for a man to have
his sight, and he living near to the like of you (he cuts a stick and
throws it away), or wed with a wife (cuts a stick); and I do be thinking
it should be a hard thing for the Almighty God to be looking on the
world, bad days, and on men the like of yourself walking around on it,
and they slipping each way in the muck.

TIMMY -- [with pot-hooks which he taps on anvil.] -- You'd have a right
to be minding, Martin Doul, for it's a power the Saint cured lose their
sight after a while. Mary Doul's dimming again, I've heard them say;
and I'm thinking the Lord, if he hears you making that talk, will have
little pity left for you at all.

MARTIN DOUL. There's not a bit of fear of me losing my sight, and if
it's a dark day itself it's too well I see every wicked wrinkle you have
round by your eye.

TIMMY -- [looking at him sharply.] -- The day's not dark since the
clouds broke in the east.

MARTIN DOUL. Let you not be tormenting yourself trying to make me
afeard. You told me a power of bad lies the time I was blind, and it's
right now for you to stop, and be taking your rest (Mary Doul comes in
unnoticed on right with a sack filled with green stuff on her arm),
for it's little ease or quiet any person would get if the big fools of
Ireland weren't weary at times. (He looks up and sees Mary Doul.) Oh,
glory be to God, she's coming again.

[He begins to work busily with his back to her.]

TIMMY -- [amused, to Mary Doul, as she is going by without looking at
them.] -- Look on him now, Mary Doul. You'd be a great one for keeping
him steady at his work, for he's after idling and blathering to this
hour from the dawn of day.

MARY DOUL -- [stiffly.] -- Of what is it you're speaking, Timmy the
smith?

TIMMY -- [laughing.] -- Of himself, surely. Look on him there, and he
with the shirt on him ripping from his back. You'd have a right to come
round this night, I'm thinking, and put a stitch into his clothes, for
it's long enough you are not speaking one to the other.

MARY DOUL. Let the two of you not torment me at all.

[She goes out left, with her head in the air.]

MARTIN DOUL -- [stops work and looks after her.] -- Well, isn't it a
queer