The Philosopher also arose; he was very indignant but did not know what to do. A singular lassitude also prevented him from interfering. As they paced along his companion began mumbling, more to herself than to him “Ah, God be with me,” said she, “an old woman on a stick, that hasn’t a place in the wide world to go to or a neighbour itself.... I wish I could get a cup of tea, so I do. I wish to God I could get a cup of tea.... Me sitting down in my own little house, with the white tablecloth on the table, and the butter in the dish, and the strong, red tea in the tea-cup; and me pouring cream into it, and, maybe, telling the children not to be wasting the sugar, the things! and himself saying he’d got to mow the big field to-day, or that the red cow was going to calve, the poor thing, and that if the boys went to school, who was going to weed the turnips—and me sitting drinking my strong cup of tea, and telling him where that old trapesing hen was laying.... Ah, God be with me! an old creature hobbling along the roads on a stick. I wish I was a young girl again, so I do, and himself coming courting me, and him saying that I was a real nice little girl surely, and that nothing would make him happy or easy at all but me to be loving him.—Ah, the kind man that he was, to be sure, the kind, decent man.... And Sorca Reilly to be trying to get him from me, and Kate Finnegan with her bold eyes looking after him in the Chapel; and him to be saying that along with me they were only a pair of old nanny goats.... And then me to be getting married and going home to my own little house with my man—ah, God be with me! and him kissing me, and laughing, and frightening me with his goings-on. Ah, the kind man, with his soft eyes, and his nice voice, and his jokes and laughing, and him thinking the world and all of me—ay, indeed.... And the neighbours to be coming in and sitting round the fire in the night time, putting the world through each other, and talking about France and Russia and them other queer places, and him holding up the discourse like a learned man, and them all listening to him and nodding their heads at each other, and wondering at his education and all: or, maybe, the neighbours to be singing, or him making me sing the Coulin, and him to be proud of me . . . and then him to be killed on me with a cold on his chest.... Ah, then, God be with me, a lone, old creature on a stick, and the sun shining into her eyes and she thirsty—I wish I had a cup of tea, so I do. I wish to God I had a cup of tea and a bit of meat . . . or, maybe, an egg. A nice fresh egg laid by the speckeldy hen that used to be giving me all the trouble, the thing!... Sixteen hens I had, and they were the ones for laying, surely.... It’s the queer world, so it is, the queer world—and the things that do happen for no reason at all.... Ah, God be with me! I wish there weren’t stones in my boots, so I do, and I wish to God I had a cup of tea and a fresh egg.