begins gnawing a turnip, too miserable to feel the others staring at him with
curiosity.]

MICHAEL -- [going after him.] -- Is it yourself fearing the polis? You're
wanting, maybe?

CHRISTY. There's many wanting.

MICHAEL. Many surely, with the broken harvest and the ended wars. (He picks
up some stockings, etc., that are near the fire, and carries them away
furtively.) It should be larceny, I'm thinking?

CHRISTY -- [dolefully.] I had it in my mind it was a different word and a
bigger.

PEGEEN. There's a queer lad. Were you never slapped in school, young fellow,
that you don't know the name of your deed?

CHRISTY -- [bashfully.] I'm slow at learning, a middling scholar only.

MICHAEL. If you're a dunce itself, you'd have a right to know that larceny's
robbing and stealing. Is it for the like of that you're wanting?

CHRISTY -- [with a flash of family pride.] -- And I the son of a strong farmer
(with a sudden qualm), God rest his soul, could have bought up the whole of
your old house a while since, from the butt of his tailpocket, and not have
missed the weight of it gone.

MICHAEL -- [impressed.] If it's not stealing, it's maybe something big.