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?

Christy (getting almost excited) I did not. “I won’t wed her,” says I, “when all know she did suckle me for six weeks when I came into the world, and she a hag this day with a tongue on her has the crows and seabirds scattered, the way they wouldn’t cast a shadow on her garden with the dread of her curse.”

Widow Quin (teasingly) That one should be right company.

Sara (eagerly) Don’t mind her. Did you kill him then?

Christy “She’s too good for the like of you,” says he, “and go on now or I’ll flatten you out like a crawling beast has passed under a dray.” “You will not if I can help it,” says I. “Go on,” says he, “or I’ll have the divil making garters of your limbs tonight.” “You will not if I can help it,” says I.

He sits up, brandishing his mug.

Sara You were right surely.

Christy (impressively). With that the sun came out between the cloud and the hill, and it shining green in my face. “God have mercy on your soul,” says he, lifting a scythe; “or on your own,” says I, raising the loy.