MIKE MCINERNEY. All the quarreling was ever in the place it was myself
did it. Sure his anger rises fast and goes away like the wind. Bring him
out with myself now, Honor Donohoe, and God bless you.
MRS. DONOHOE. Well, then, I will not bring him out, and I will not bring
yourself out, and you not to learn better sense. Are you making yourself
ready to come?
MIKE MCINERNEY. I am thinking, maybe ... it is a mean thing for a man
that is shivering into seventy years to go changing from place to place.
MRS. DONOHOE. Well, take your luck or leave it. All I asked was to save
you from the hurt and the harm of the year.
MIKE MCINERNEY. Bring the both of us with you or I will not stir out of
this.
MRS. DONOHOE. Give me back my fine suit so [_begins gathering up the
clothes_], till I go look for a man of my own!
MIKE MCINERNEY. Let you go so, as you are so unnatural and so
disobliging, and look for some man of your own, God help him! For I will
not go with you at all!
MRS. DONOHOE. It is too much time I lost with you, and dark night
waiting to overtake me on the road. Let the two of you stop together,
and the back of my hand to you. It is I will leave you there the same as
God left the Jews!
[_She goes out. The old men lie down and are silent for a moment._]
MICHAEL MISKELL. Maybe the house is not so wide as what she says.
MIKE MCINERNEY. Why wouldn't it be wide?
MICHAEL MISKELL. Ah, there does be a good deal of middling poor houses
down by the sea.
MIKE MCINERNEY. What would you know about wide houses? Whatever sort of
a house you had yourself it was too wide for the provision you had into
it.
MICHAEL MISKELL. Whatever provision I had in my house it was wholesome
provision and natural provision. Herself and her periwinkles!
Periwinkles is a hungry sort of food.
MIKE MCINERNEY. Stop your impudence and your chat or it will be the
worse for you. I'd bear with my own father and mother as long as any man
would, but if they'd vex me I would give them the length of a rope as
soon as another!
MICHAEL MISKELL. I would never ask at all to go eating periwinkles.
MIKE MCINERNEY [_sitting up_]. Have you any one to fight me?
MICHAEL MISKELL [_whimpering_]. I have not, only the Lord!
MIKE MCINERNEY. Let you leave putting insults on me so, and death
picking at you!
MICHAEL MISKELL. Sure I am saying nothing at all to displease you. It is
why I wouldn't go eating periwinkles, I'm in dread I might swallow the
pin.
MIKE MCINERNEY. Who in the world wide is asking you to eat them? You're
as tricky as a fish in the full tide!
MICHAEL MISKELL. Tricky is it! Oh, my curse and the curse of the four
and twenty men upon you!
MIKE MCINERNEY. That the worm may chew you from skin to marrow bone!
[_Seizes his pillow._]
MICHAEL MISKELL [_seizing his own pillow_]. I'll leave my death on you,
you scheming vagabone!
MIKE MCINERNEY. By cripes! I'll pull out your pin feathers! [_throwing
pillow_].
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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