BARTLEY. Indeed it's a poor country and a scarce country to be living in. But I'm thinking if I went to America it's long ago the day I'd be dead! MRS. FALLON. So you might, indeed. (_She puts her basket on a barrel and begins putting parcels in it, taking them from under her cloak._) BARTLEY. And it's a great expense for a poor man to be buried in America. MRS. FALLON. Never fear, Bartley Fallon, but I'll give you a good burying the day you'll die. 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.