MIKE MCINERNEY. So you are, I believe. I didn't know you till you pushed
anear me. It is time indeed for you to come see me, and I in this place
five year or more. Thinking me to be no credit to you, I suppose, among
that tribe of the Donohoes. I wonder they to give you leave to come ask
am I living yet or dead?
MRS. DONOHOE. Ah, sure, I buried the whole string of them. Himself was
the last to go. [_Wipes her eyes._] The Lord be praised he got a fine
natural death. Sure we must go through our crosses. And he got a lovely
funeral; it would delight you to hear the priest reading the Mass. My
poor John Donohoe! A nice clean man, you couldn't but be fond of him.
Very severe on the tobacco he was, but he wouldn't touch the drink.
MIKE MCINERNEY. And is it in Curranroe you are living yet?
MRS. DONOHOE. It is so. He left all to myself. But it is a lonesome
thing the head of a house to have died!
MIKE MCINERNEY. I hope that he has left you a nice way of living?
MRS. DONOHOE. Fair enough, fair enough. A wide lovely house I have; a
few acres of grass land ... the grass does be very sweet that grows
among the stones. And as to the sea, there is something from it every
day of the year, a handful of periwinkles to make kitchen, or cockles
maybe. There is many a thing in the sea is not decent, but cockles is
fit to put before the Lord!
MIKE MCINERNEY. You have all that! And you without e'er a man in the
house?
MRS. DONOHOE. It is what I am thinking, yourself might come and keep me
company. It is no credit to me a brother of my own to be in this place
at all.
MIKE MCINERNEY. I'll go with you! Let me out of this! It is the name of
the McInerneys will be rising on every side!
MRS. DONOHOE. I don't know. I was ignorant of you being kept to the bed.
MIKE MCINERNEY. I am not kept to it, but maybe an odd time when there is
a colic rises up within me. My stomach always gets better the time there
is a change in the moon. I'd like well to draw anear you. My heavy
blessing on you, Honor Donohoe, for the hand you have held out to me
this day.
MRS. DONOHOE. Sure you could be keeping the fire in, and stirring the
pot with the bit of Indian meal for the hens, and milking the goat and
taking the tacklings off the donkey at the door; and maybe putting out
the cabbage plants in their time. For when the old man died the garden
died.
MIKE MCINERNEY. I could to be sure, and be cutting the potatoes for
seed. What luck could there be in a place and a man not to be in it? Is
that now a suit of clothes you have brought with you?
MRS. DONOHOE. It is so, the way you will be tasty coming in among the
neighbors at Curranroe.
MIKE MCINERNEY. My joy you are! It is well you earned me! Let me up out
of this! [_He sits up and spreads out the clothes and tries on coat._]
That now is a good frieze coat ... and a hat in the fashion.... [_He
puts on hat._]
MICHAEL MISKELL [_alarmed_]. And is it going out of this you are, Mike
McInerney?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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