_Mrs. Broderick:_ What I say now is as true as if you were on the other side of me. I suppose now the priest is come home there'll be no delay getting the license.

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ It is not so settled as that.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Why wouldn't it be settled and it being told at Mrs. Delane's and through the whole world?

_Peter Tannian:_ She should be a steady wife for him--a fortied girl.

_Shawn Early:_ A very good fortune in the bank they are saying she has, and she having crossed the ocean twice to America.

_Hartley Fallen:_ It's as good for him to have a woman will keep the door open before him and his victuals ready and a quiet tongue in her head. Not like that little Tartar of my own.

_Mrs. Broderick_. And an educated woman along with that. A man of his sort, going to be Clerk of the Union and to be taken up with books and papers, it's likely he'd die in a week, he to marry a dunce.

_Bartley Fallon:_ So it's likely he would.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ A little shop they are saying she will take, for to open a flour store, and you to be keeping the accounts, the way you would not spend any waste time.

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ I have no mind to be settling myself down yet a while. I might maybe take a ramble here or there. There's many of my comrades in the States.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ To go away from Cloon, is it? And why would you think to do that, and the whole town the same as a father and mother to you? Sure, the sergeant would live and die with you, and there are no two from this to Galway as great as yourself and the priest.

To see you coming up the street, and your Dublin top-coat around you, there are some would give you a salute the same nearly as the Bishop.

_Peter Tannian:_ They wouldn't do that maybe and they hearing things as I heard them.

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ What things?

_Peter Tannian:_ There was a herd pa.s.sing through from Carrow. It is what I heard him saying------

_Mrs. Broderick:_ You heard nothing of Mr. Halvey, but what is worthy of him. But that's the way always. The most thing a man does, the less he will get for it after.

_Peter Tannian:_ A grand place in Carrow I suppose you had?

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ I had plenty of places. Giving out proclamations--attending waterworks----.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ It is well fitted for any place he is, and all that was written around him and he coming into Cloon.

_Peter Tannian:_ Writing is easy.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Look at him since he was here, this twelvemonth back, that he never went into a dance-house or stood at a cross-road, and never lost a half-an-hour with drink. Made no blunder, made no rumours. Whatever could be said of his worth, it could not be too well said.

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Do you think now, ma'am, would it be any harm I to go spend a day or maybe two days out of this--I to go on the train----.

_Miss Joyce: (At door, coming in backwards.)_ Go back now, go back!

Don't be following after me in through the door! Is Mr. Halvey there?

Don't let her come following me, Mr. Halvey!

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Who is it is in it?

_(Sound of discordant singing outside.)_

_Miss Joyce:_ Cracked Mary it is, that is after coming back this day from the asylum.

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ I never saw her, I think.

_Shawn Early:_ The creature, she was light this long while and not good in the head, and at the last lunacy came on her and she was tied and bound. Sometimes singing and dancing she does be, and sometimes troublesome.

_Miss Joyce:_ They had a right to keep her spancelled in the asylum.

She would begrudge any respectable person to be walking the street.

She'd hoot you, she'd shout you, she'd clap her hands at you. She is a blight in the town.

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ There is a lad along with her.

_Shawn Early:_ It is Davideen, her brother, that is innocent. He was left rambling from place to place the time she was put within walls.

_(Cracked Mary and Davideen come in.

Miss Joyce clings to Hyacinth's arm.)_

_Cracked Mary:_ Give me a charity now, the way I'll be keeping a little rag on me and a little shoe to my foot. Give me the price of tobacco and the price of a grain of tea; for tobacco is blessed and tea is good for the head.

_Shawn Early:_ Give out now, Davideen, a verse of "The Heather Broom." That's a splendid tune.

_Davideen: (Sings.)_

Oh, don't you remember, As it's often I told you, As you pa.s.sed through our kitchen, That a new broom sweeps clean?

Come out now and buy one, Come out now and try one--

_(His voice cracks, and he breaks off, laughing foolishly.)_

_Mrs. Broderick:_ He has a sweet note in his voice, but to know or to understand what he is doing, he couldn't do it.

_Cracked Mary:_ Leave him a while. His song that does be clogged through the daytime, the same as the sight is clogged with myself. It isn't but in the night time I can see anything worth while. Davy is a proper boy, a proper boy; let you leave Davy alone. It was himself came before me ere yesterday in the morning, and I walking out the madhouse door.

_Shawn Early:_ It is often there will fiddlers be waiting to play for them coming out, that are maybe the finest dancers of the day.

_Cracked Mary:_ Waiting before me he was, and no one to give him knowledge unless it might be the Big Man. I give you my word he near ate the face off me. As glad to see me he was as if I had dropped from heaven. Come hither to me, Davy, and give no heed to them. It is as dull and as lagging as themselves you would be maybe, and the world to be different and the moon to change its courses with the sun.

_Bartley Fallon:_ I never would wish to be put within a madhouse before I'd die.

_Cracked Mary:_ Sorry they were losing me. There was not a better prisoner in it than my own four bones.

_Bartley Fallon:_ Squeals you would hear from it, they were telling me, like you'd hear at the ringing of the pigs. Savages with whips beating them the same as hounds. You would not stand and listen to them for a hundred sovereigns. Of all bad things that can come upon a man, it is certain the madness is the last.

_Miss Joyce:_ It is likely she was well content in it, and the friends she had being of her own cla.s.s.

_Cracked Mary:_ What way could you make friends with people would be always talking? Too much of talk and of noise there was in it, cursing, and praying, and tormenting; some dancing, some singing, and one writing a letter to a she devil called Lucifer. I not to close my ears, I would have lost the sound of Davideen's song.

_Miss Joyce:_ It was good shelter you got in it through the bad weather, and not to be out perishing under cold, the same as the starlings in the snow.

_Cracked Mary:_ I was my seven months in it, my seven months and a day. My good clothes that went astray on me and my boots. My fine gaudy dress was all moth-eated, that was worked with the wings of birds. To fall into dust and ashes it did, and the wings rose up into the high air.