holding his head high with the wonders of the world. Walk on from this, for Iâll not have him tormented and he destroyed travelling since Tuesday was a week.
WIDOW QUIN (peacefully). Weâll be walking surely when his supperâs done, and youâll find weâre great company, young fellow, when itâs of the like of you and me youâd hear the penny poets singing in an August Fair.
CHRISTY (innocently). Did you kill your father?
PEGEEN (contemptuously). She did not. She hit himself with a worn pick, and the rusted poison did corrode his blood the way he never overed it, and died after. That was a sneaky kind of murder did win small glory with the boys itself. (She crosses to CHRISTYâS left.)
WIDOW QUIN (with good-humour). If it didnât, maybe all knows a widow woman has buried her children and destroyed her man is a wiser comrade for a young lad than a girl, the like of you, whoâd go helter-skeltering after any man would let you a wink upon the road.
PEGEEN (breaking out into wild rage). And youâll say that, Widow Quin, and you gasping with the rage you had racing the hill beyond to look on his face.
WIDOW QUIN (laughing derisively). Me, is it? Well, Father Reilly has cuteness to divide you now. (She pulls CHRISTY up.) Thereâs great temptation in a man did slay his da, and weâd best be going, young fellow; so rise up and come with me.
PEGEEN (seizing his arm). Heâll not stir. Heâs pot-boy in this place, and Iâll not have him stolen off and kidnabbed while himselfâs abroad.
WIDOW QUIN. Itâd be a crazy pot-boyâd lodge him in the shebeen where he works by day, so youâd have a right to come on, young fellow, till you see my little houseen, a perch off on the rising hill.
PEGEEN. Wait till morning, Christy Mahon. Wait till you lay eyes on her leaky thatch is growing more pasture for her buck goat than her square of fields, and she without a tramp itself to keep in order her place at all.
WIDOW QUIN. When you see me contriving in my little gardens, Christy Mahon, youâll swear the Lord God formed me to be living lone, and that there isnât my match in Mayo for thatching, or mowing, or shearing a sheep.
PEGEEN (with noisy scorn). Itâs true the Lord God formed you to contrive indeed. Doesnât the world know you reared a black lamb at your own breast, so that the Lord Bishop of Connaught felt the elements of a Christian, and he eating it after in a kidney stew? Doesnât the world know youâve been seen shaving the foxy skipper from France for a threepenny bit and a sop of grass tobacco would wring the liver from a mountain goat youâd meet leaping the hills?
WIDOW QUIN (with amusement). Do you hear her now, young fellow? Do you hear the way sheâll be rating at your own self when a week is by?
PEGEEN (to CHRISTY). Donât heed her. Tell her to go into her pigsty and not plague us here.
WIDOW QUIN. Iâm going; but heâll come with me.
PEGEEN (shaking him). Are you dumb, young fellow?
CHRISTY (timidly, to WIDOW QUIN). God increase you; but Iâm pot-boy in this place, and itâs here Iâd liefer stay.
PEGEEN (triumphantly). Now you have heard him, and go on from this.
WIDOW QUIN (looking round the room). Itâs lonesome this hour crossing the hill, and if he wonât come along with me, Iâd have a right maybe to stop this night with yourselves. Let me stretch out on the settle, Pegeen Mike; and himself can lie by the hearth.
PEGEEN (short and fiercely). Faith, I wonât. Quit off or I will send you now.
WIDOW QUIN (gathering her shawl up). Well, itâs a terror to be aged a score. (To CHRISTY) God bless you now, young fellow, and let you be wary, or thereâs right torment will await you here if you go romancing with her like, and she waiting only, as they bade me say, on a sheepskin parchment to be wed with Shawn Keogh of Killakeen.
CHRISTY (going to PEGEEN as