_Bartley:_ Maybe it’s yourself will be buried in the graveyard of Cloonmara before me, Mary Fallon, and I myself that will be dying unbeknownst some night, and no one a-near me. And the cat itself may be gone straying through the country, and the mice squealing over the quilt. _Mrs. Fallon:_ Leave off talking of dying. It might be twenty years you’ll be living yet. _Bartley:_ (_With a deep sigh._) I’m thinking if I’ll be living at the end of twenty years, it’s a very old man I’ll be then! _Mrs. Tarpey:_ (_Turns and sees them._) Good morrow, Bartley Fallon; good morrow, Mrs. Fallon. Well, Bartley, you’ll find no cause for complaining to-day; they are all saying it was a good fair. _Bartley:_ (_Raising his voice._) It was not a good fair, Mrs. Tarpey. It was a scattered sort of a fair. If we didn’t expect more, we got less. That’s the way with me always; whatever I have to sell goes down and whatever I have to buy goes up. If there’s ever any misfortune coming to this world, it’s on myself it pitches, like a flock of crows on seed potatoes. _Mrs. Fallon:_ Leave off talking of misfortunes, and listen to Jack Smith that is coming the way, and he singing. (_Voice of Jack Smith heard singing:_) I thought, my first love, There’d be but one house between you and me, And I thought I would find Yourself coaxing my child on your knee. Over the tide I would leap with the leap of a swan, Till I came to the side Of the wife of the Red-haired man! (_Jack Smith comes in; he is a red-haired man, and is carrying a hayfork._) _Mrs. Tarpey:_ That should be a good song if I had my hearing. _Mrs. Fallon:_ (_Shouting._) It’s “The Red-haired Man’s Wife.” _Mrs. Tarpey:_ I know it well. That’s the song that has a skin on it! (_She turns her back to them and goes on arranging her apples._) _Mrs. Fallon:_ Where’s herself, Jack Smith? _Jack Smith:_ She was delayed with her washing; bleaching the clothes on the hedge she is, and she daren’t leave them, with all the tinkers that do be passing to the fair. It isn’t to the fair I came myself, but up to the Five Acre Meadow I’m going, where I have a contract for the hay. We’ll get a share of it into tramps to-day. (_He lays down hayfork and lights his pipe._) _Bartley:_ You will not get it into tramps to-day. The rain will be down on it by evening, and on myself too. It’s seldom I ever started on a journey but the rain would come down on me before I’d find any place of shelter. _Jack Smith:_ If it didn’t itself, Bartley, it is my belief you would carry a leaky pail on your head in place of a hat, the way you’d not be without some cause of complaining. (_A voice heard, “Go on, now, go on out o’ that. Go on I say.”_) _Jack Smith:_ Look at that young mare of Pat Ryan’s that is backing into Shaughnessy’s bullocks with the dint of the crowd! Don’t be daunted, Pat, I’ll give you a hand with her. (_He goes out, leaving his hayfork._)