New Comedies Part 18

_Damer:_ I have it in my mind that ye are. Very ravenous to run through my money ye are.

_Delia:_ The world knows I am not ravenous! I never gave my heart to silver or to gold but only to the thing it would bring in. But to hold from me the thing my heart is craving after, you might as well blacken the hearth.

_Damer:_ Striving to scare me out of my courage and my wits, the way I'll give in to go making my will.

_Ralph:_ She would not be wishful you to do that the time your mind would be vexed.

_Damer:_ I'll make it, sick or sound, if I have a mind to make it.

_Delia:_ Little thanks you'll get from me if you make it or do not make it. That is the naked truth.

_Damer:_ The whole of ye think yourselves to be very managing and very wise!

_Delia:_ Let you go will it so to an asylum for fools.

_Damer:_ Why wouldn't I? It is in the asylums all the sense is these times. There is only the fools left outside.

_Delia:_ You to bestow it outside of your own kindred for to benefit and comfort your soul, all the world will say it is that you had it gathered together by fraud.

_Staffy:_ Do not be annoying him now.

_Delia:_ I will not. But the time he will be lying under the flagstone, it is holly rods and brambles will spring up from out of his th.o.r.n.y heart.

_Damer:_ A hasty, cranky woman in the house is worse than you to lay your hand upon red coals! I know well your tongue that is as sharp as the sickle of the moon!

_Delia:_ The character you will leave after you will be worse out and out than Herod's!

_Damer:_ The devil upon the winds she is! That one was born into the world having the use of the bow and arrows!

_Delia:_ You not to give fair play to your own, it is a pitiful ghost will appear in your image, questing and craving our prayers!

_Damer:_ I know well what is your aim and your drift!

_Delia:_ I say any man has a right to give thanks to the heavens, and he having decent people to will his means to, in place of people having no call to it.

_Damer:_ Whoever I'll will it to will have call to it!

_Delia:_ Or to part with it to low people and to mean people, and you having it to give.

_Damer:_ Having it to give is it? Do you see that lock on the door?

_Delia:_ I do see it and have eyes to see it.

_Damer:_ Can you make any guess what is inside of it?

_Delia:_ It is likely it is what there is so much talk about, your own full gallon of gold.

_(Ralph takes off his hat.)_

_Damer:_ Lay now your eye to that lock hole.

_Ralph: (Looking through keyhole.)_ It is all dusky within. It fails me to see any shining thing.

_(Staffy and Delia put their eyes to keyhole but draw back disappointed.)_

_Darner:_ If you cannot see it, try can you get the smell of it.

Take a good draw of it now; lay your head along the hinges of the door. So now ye may quit and scamper out of this, the whole throng of ye, robbers and hangmen and bankbreakers, bargers and bad characters, and you may believe me telling you that is the nearest ye ever will come to my gold!

_(He bangs back into room locking door after him.)_

_Delia:_ He has no more nature than the brutes of the field, hunting and howling after us.

_Staffy:_ Yourself that rose him out of his wits and his senses.

We will sup sorrow for this day's work where he will put curses after us. It is best for us go back to my place. It may be to-morrow that his anger will be cured up.

_Ralph:_ I thought it was to lay him out with candles we were brought here. I declare I came nearer furnishing out a corpse myself with the start I got.

_Delia:_ There is no dread on me. When he gets in humour I will tackle up again to him. It is too far I came to be facing back to Loughtysha.s.sy and I fasting from the price of my goats! Little collars I was thinking to buckle around their neck the same as a lady's lapdog, and maybe so far as a small clear-sounding bell.

_(They go out, Damer comes back. He puts on clock, rakes out fire, picks up potatoes and puts them back in sieve, takes bread into his room. There is a knock at the door. Then it is cautiously opened and Simon Niland comes in, and stands near the hearth. Damer comes back and sees him.)_

_Damer:_ What are you looking for?

_Simon:_ For what I won't get seemingly, that is a welcome.

_Damer:_ Maybe it's for fists you are looking?

_Simon:_ It is not, before I will get my rest. I couldn't box to-night if I was the Queen of England.

_Damer:_ Have you any traffic with that congregation is after going out?

_Simon:_ I seen no person good or bad, but a dog and it on the chain.

_Damer:_ You to have in you any of the breed of the Kirwans that is my own, I'd rise the tongs and pitch you out from the door!

_Simon:_ I suppose you would not begrudge me to rest myself for a while, _(Sits down.)_

_Damer:_ I'll give leave to no strolling vagabond to sit in any place at all.

_Simon:_ All right so.

_(Tosses a coin he takes from his pocket, tied in a spotted handkerchief.)_

_Damer:_ What's that you're doing?

_Simon:_ Pitching a coin I was to see would it bid me go west or east.

_Damer:_ Go toss outside so.