NORA. (_Taking the stocking with money from her pocket, and putting it on the table._) I do be thinking in the long nights it was a big fool I was that time, Micheal Dara, for what good is a bit of a farm with cows on it, and sheep on the back hills, when you do be sitting looking out from a door the like of that door, and seeing nothing but the mists rolling down the bog, and the mists again, and they rolling up the bog, and hearing nothing but the wind crying out in the bits of broken trees were left from the great storm, and the streams roaring with the rain. MICHEAL. (_Looking at her uneasily._) What is it ails you, this night, Nora Burke? I’ve heard tell it’s the like of that talk you do hear from men, and they after being a great while on the back hills. NORA. (_Putting out the money on the table._) It’s a bad night, and a wild night, Micheal Dara, and isn’t it a great while I am at the foot of the back hills, sitting up here boiling food for himself, and food for the brood sow, and baking a cake when the night falls? (_She puts up the money, listlessly, in little piles on the table._) Isn’t it a long while I am sitting here in the winter and the summer, and the fine spring, with the young growing behind me and the old passing, saying to myself one time, to look on Mary Brien who wasn’t that height (_holding out her hand_), and I a fine girl growing up, and there she is now with two children, and another coming on her in three months or four. (_She pauses._) MICHEAL. (_Moving over three of the piles._) That’s three pounds we have now, Nora Burke. NORA. (_Continuing in the same voice._) And saying to myself another time, to look on Peggy Cavanagh, who had the lightest hand at milking a cow that wouldn’t be easy, or turning a cake, and there she is now walking round on the roads, or sitting in a dirty old house, with no teeth in her mouth, and no sense and no more hair than you’ld see on a bit of a hill and they after burning the furze from it. MICHEAL. That’s five pounds and ten notes, a good sum, surely!... It’s not that way you’ll be talking when you marry a young man, Nora Burke, and they were saying in the fair my lambs were the best lambs, and I got a grand price, for I’m no fool now at making a bargain when my lambs are good. NORA. What was it you got? MICHEAL. Twenty pound for the lot, Nora Burke.... We’ld do right to wait now till himself will be quiet awhile in the Seven Churches, and then you’ll marry me in the chapel of Rathvanna, and I’ll bring the sheep up on the bit of a hill you have on the back mountain, and we won’t have anything we’ld be afeard to let our minds on when the mist is down.