(He gets quieter.) That's a good
boy you are now, your reverence, and let you
not be uneasy, for we wouldn't hurt you at
50
all. It's sick and sorry we are to tease you;
but what did you want meddling with the
like of us, when it's a long time we are going
our own ways -- father and son, and his son
after him, or mother and daughter, and her
own daughter again -- and it's little need we
ever had of going up into a church and swear-
ing -- I'm told there's swearing with it -- a
word no man would believe, or with drawing
rings on our fingers, would be cutting our
skins maybe when we'd be taking the ass from
the shafts, and pulling the straps the time
they'd be slippy with going around beneath
the heavens in rains falling.
MICHAEL --
who has finished bundling
up the things, comes over to Sarah. -- We're
fixed now; and I have a mind to run him in
a boghole the way he'll not be tattling to the
peelers of our games to-day.
SARAH. You'd have a right too, I'm
thinking.
MARY --
soothingly. -- Let you not be
rough with him, Sarah Casey, and he after
drinking his sup of porter with us at the fall
of night. Maybe he'd swear a mighty oath
he wouldn't harm us, and then we'd safer
loose him; for if we went to drown him,
they'd maybe hang the batch of us, man and
child and woman, and the ass itself.
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