_Mother_: Thoughts crowding on one another, mixing themselves up with one another for the want of sifting and settling! They'll have me distracted and I not able to speak them out to some person! Conan as surly as a bramble bush, and Celia wrapped up in her bucket and her broom!

And yourself not able to hear one word I say. _(Sobs, and bellows falls from her hands.)_

_Timothy_: I'll lay it down now out of your way, ma'am, the way you can cry your fill whatever ails you.

_Mother: (s.n.a.t.c.hing it back.)_ Stop! I'll not part with it! I know now what I can do! Now!

_(Points it at him.)_ I'll make a companion to be listening to me through the long winter nights and the long summer days, and the world to be without any end at all, no more than the round of the full moon! You that have no hearing, this will bring back your hearing, the way you'll be a listener and a benefit to myself for ever. I wouldn't feel the weeks long that time!

_(Blows. Timothy turns away and gropes toward wall.)_

_(She sings: Air, "Eileen Aroon.")_

"What if the days go wrong, When you can hear!

What if the evening's long, You being near, I'll tell my troubles out, Put darkness to the rout And to the roundabout!

Having your ear!"

_(Rock at door: sneezes. Mother drops bellows and goes. Timothy gives a cry, claps hands to ears and rushes out as if terrified.)_

_Rock: (Coming in seizes bellows.)_ Well now, didn't this turn to be very lucky and very good!

The very thing I came looking for to be left there under my hands! _(Puts it hurriedly under coat.)_

_Flannery: (Coming in.)_ What are you doing here, James Rock?

_Rock_: What are you doing yourself?

_Flannery_: What is that in under your coat?

_Rock_: What's that to you?

_Flannery_: I'll know that when I see it.

_Rock_: What call have you to be questioning me?

_Flannery_: Open now your coat!

_Rock_: Stand out of my way!

_Flannery: (Suddenly tearing open coat and seizing bellows.)_ Did you think it was unknownst to me you stole the bellows?

_Rock_: Ah, what steal?

_Flannery_: Put it back in the place it was!

_Rock_: I will within three minutes.

_Flannery_: You'll put it back here and now.

_Rock: (Coaxingly.)_ Look at here now, Michael Flannery, we'll make a league between us. Did you ever see such folly as we're after seeing to-day?

Sitting there for an hour and a half till that one settled the world upside down!

_Flannery_: If I did see folly, what I see now is treachery.

_Rock_: Didn't you take notice of the way that foolish old man is wasting and losing what was given him for to benefit mankind? A blast he has lost turning a pigeon to a crow, as if there wasn't enough in it before of that tribe picking the spuds out of the ridges. And another blast he has lost turning poor Celia, that was harmless, to be a holy terror of cleanness and a scold.

_Flannery_: Indeed, he'd as well have left her as she was. There was something very pleasing in her little sleepy ways.

_(Sings.)_

"But sad it is to see you so And to think of you now as an object of woe; Your Peggy'll still keep an eye on her beau.

O Johnny, I hardly knew you!"

_Rock_: Bringing back to the memory of his mother every old grief and rancour. She that has a right to be making her peace with the grave!

_Flannery_: Indeed it seems he doesn't mind what he'll get so long as it's something that he wants.

_Rock_: Three blasts gone! And the world didn't begin to be cured.

_Flannery_: Sure enough he gave the bellows no fair play.

_Rock_: He has us made a fool of. He using it the way he did, he has us robbed.

_Flannery_: There's power in the four blasts left would bring peace and piety and prosperity and plenty to every one of the four provinces of Ireland.

_Rock_: That's it. There's no doubt but I'll make a better use of it than him, because I am a better man than himself.

_Flannery_: I don't know. You might not get so much respect in Dublin.

_Rock_: Dublin, where are you! What would I'd do going to Dublin? Did you never hear said the skin to be nearer than the shirt?

_Flannery_: What do you mean saying that?

_Rock_: The first one I have to do good to is myself.

_Flannery_: Is it that you would grab the benefit of the bellows?

_Rock_: In troth I will. I've got a hold of it, and by cripes I'll knock a good turn out of it.

_Flannery_: To rob the country and the poor for your own profit? You are a cla.s.s of man that is gathering all for himself.

_Rock_: It is not worth while we to fall out of friendship. I will use but the one blast.

_Flannery_: You have no right or call to meddle with it.

_Rock_: The first thing I will meddle with is my own rick of turf. And I'll give you leave to go do the same with your own umbrella, or whatever property you may own.

_Flannery_: Sooner than be covetous like yourself I'd live and die in a ditch, and be buried from the Poorhouse!

_Rock_: Turf being black and light in the hand, and gold being shiny and weighty, there will be no delay in turning every sod into a solid brick of gold. I give you leave to do the same thing, and we'll be two rich men inside a half an hour!

_Flannery_: You are no less than a thief! _(s.n.a.t.c.hes at bellows.)_