Widow Quin It’d be a crazy pot-boy’d lodge him in the shebeen where he works by day, so you’d have a right to come on, young fellow, till you see my little houseen, a perch off on the rising hill.

Pegeen Wait till morning, Christy Mahon. Wait till you lay eyes on her leaky thatch is growing more pasture for her buck goat than her square of fields, and she without a tramp itself to keep in order her place at all.

Widow Quin When you see me contriving in my little gardens, Christy Mahon, you’ll swear the Lord God formed me to be living lone, and that there isn’t my match in Mayo for thatching, or mowing, or shearing a sheep.

Pegeen (with noisy scorn). It’s true the Lord God formed you to contrive indeed. Doesn’t the world know you reared a black lamb at your own breast, so that the Lord Bishop of Connaught felt the elements of a Christian, and he eating it after in a kidney stew? Doesn’t the world know you’ve been seen shaving the foxy skipper from France for a threepenny bit and a sop of grass tobacco would wring the liver from a mountain goat you’d meet leaping the hills?

Widow Quin (with amusement). Do you hear her now, young fellow? Do you hear the way she’ll be rating at your own self when a week is by?

Pegeen (to Christy). Don’t heed her. Tell her to go into her pigsty and not plague us here.

Widow Quin I’m going; but he’ll come with me.

Pegeen (shaking him). Are you dumb, young fellow?

Christy (timidly, to Widow Quin). God increase you; but I’m pot-boy in this place, and it’s here I liefer stay.

Pegeen (triumphantly). Now you have heard him, and go on from this.

Widow Quin (looking round the room). It’s lonesome this hour crossing the hill, and if he won’t come along with me, I’d have a right maybe to stop this night with yourselves. Let me stretch out on the settle, Pegeen Mike; and himself can lie by the hearth.

Pegeen (short and fiercely). Faith, I won’t. Quit off or I will send you now.

Widow Quin (gathering her shawl up). Well, it’s a terror to be aged a score. (To Christy.) God bless you now, young fellow, and let you be wary, or there’s right torment will await you here if you go romancing with her like, and she waiting only, as they bade me say, on a sheepskin parchment to be wed with Shawn Keogh of Killakeen.

Christy (going to Pegeen as she bolts the door). What’s that she’s after saying?

Pegeen Lies and blather, you’ve no call to mind. Well, isn’t Shawn Keogh an impudent fellow to send up spying on me? Wait till I lay hands on him. Let him wait, I’m saying.

Christy And you’re not wedding him at all?

Pegeen I wouldn’t wed him if a bishop came walking for to join us here.

Christy That God in glory may be thanked for that.

Pegeen There’s your bed now. I’ve put a quilt upon you I’m after quilting a while since with my own two hands, and you’d best stretch out now for your sleep, and may God give you a good rest till I call you in the morning when the cocks will crow.