Mahon Is it me?

Widow Quin (amusing herself). Aye. And isn’t it a great shame when the old and hardened do torment the young?

Mahon (raging). Torment him is it? And I after holding out with the patience of a martyred saint till there’s nothing but destruction on, and I’m driven out in my old age with none to aid me.

Widow Quin (greatly amused). It’s a sacred wonder the way that wickedness will spoil a man.

Mahon My wickedness, is it? Amn’t I after saying it is himself has me destroyed, and he a liar on walls, a talker of folly, a man you’d see stretched the half of the day in the brown ferns with his belly to the sun.

Widow Quin Not working at all?

Mahon The divil a work, or if he did itself, you’d see him raising up a haystack like the stalk of a rush, or driving our last cow till he broke her leg at the hip, and when he wasn’t at that he’d be fooling over little birds he had—finches and felts—or making mugs at his own self in the bit of glass we had hung on the wall.

Widow Quin (looking at Christy). What way was he so foolish? It was running wild after the girls may be?

Mahon (with a shout of derision). Running wild, is it? If he seen a red petticoat coming swinging over the hill, he’d be off to hide in the sticks, and you’d see him shooting out his sheep’s eyes between the little twigs and the leaves, and his two ears rising like a hare looking out through a gap. Girls, indeed!

Widow Quin It was drink maybe?

Mahon And he a poor fellow would get drunk on the smell of a pint. He’d a queer rotten stomach, I’m telling you, and when I gave him three pulls from my pipe a while since, he was taken with contortions till I had to send him in the ass cart to the females’ nurse.

Widow Quin (clasping her hands). Well, I never till this day heard tell of a man the like of that!

Mahon I’d take a mighty oath you didn’t surely, and wasn’t he the laughing joke of every female woman where four baronies meet, the way the girls would stop their weeding if they seen him coming the road to let a roar at him, and call him the looney of Mahon’s.

Widow Quin I’d give the world and all to see the like of him. What kind was he?

Mahon A small, low fellow.

Widow Quin And dark?

Mahon Dark and dirty.

Widow Quin (considering). I’m thinking I seen him.

Mahon (eagerly). An ugly young blackguard.

Widow Quin A hideous, fearful villain, and the spit of you.

Mahon What way is he fled?

Widow Quin Gone over the hills to catch a coasting steamer to the north or south.