CHRISTY. It’s bursting, surely. [_He feels it with the back of his hand, in which he holds the presents._] SARA. Will you pinch it? Is your right hand too sacred for to use at all? (_She slips round behind him._) It’s a glass he has. Well, I never seen to this day a man with a looking-glass held to his back. Them that kills their fathers is a vain lot surely. (_Girls giggle._) CHRISTY. _smiling innocently and piling presents on glass._—I’m very thankful to you all to-day.... WIDOW QUIN. _coming in quickly, at door._—Sara Tansey, Susan Brady, Honor Blake! What in glory has you here at this hour of day? GIRLS. _giggling._—That’s the man killed his father. WIDOW QUIN. _coming to them._—I know well it’s the man; and I’m after putting him down in the sports below for racing, leaping, pitching, and the Lord knows what. SARA. _exuberantly._—That’s right, Widow Quin. I’ll bet my dowry that he’ll lick the world. WIDOW QUIN. If you will, you’d have a right to have him fresh and nourished in place of nursing a feast. (_Taking presents._) Are you fasting or fed, young fellow? CHRISTY. Fasting, if you please. WIDOW QUIN. _loudly._—Well, you’re the lot. Stir up now and give him his breakfast. (_To Christy._) Come here to me (_she puts him on bench beside her while the girls make tea and get his breakfast_) and let you tell us your story before Pegeen will come, in place of grinning your ears off like the moon of May. CHRISTY. _beginning to be pleased._—It’s a long story; you’d be destroyed listening. WIDOW QUIN. Don’t be letting on to be shy, a fine, gamey, treacherous lad the like of you. Was it in your house beyond you cracked his skull? CHRISTY. _shy but flattered._—It was not. We were digging spuds in his cold, sloping, stony, divil’s patch of a field. WIDOW QUIN. And you went asking money of him, or making talk of getting a wife would drive him from his farm? CHRISTY. I did not, then; but there I was, digging and digging, and “You squinting idiot,” says he, “let you walk down now and tell the priest you’ll wed the Widow Casey in a score of days.” WIDOW QUIN. And what kind was she? CHRISTY. _with horror._—A walking terror from beyond the hills, and she two score and five years, and two hundredweights and five pounds in the weighing scales, with a limping leg on her, and a blinded eye, and she a woman of noted misbehaviour with the old and young. GIRLS. _clustering round him, serving him._—Glory be! WIDOW QUIN. And what did he want driving you to wed with her? [_She takes a bit of the chicken._] CHRISTY. _eating with growing satisfaction._—He was letting on I was wanting a protector from the harshness of the world, and he without a thought the whole while but how he’d have her hut to live in and her gold to drink. WIDOW QUIN. There’s maybe worse than a dry hearth and a widow woman and your glass at night. So you hit him then?