MAHON -- [raging.] Torment him is it? And I after holding out with the
patience of a martyred saint till there's nothing but destruction on, and I'm
driven out in my old age with none to aid me.

WIDOW QUIN -- [greatly amused.] -- It's a sacred wonder the way that
wickedness will spoil a man.

MAHON. My wickedness, is it? Amn't I after saying it is himself has me
destroyed, and he a liar on walls, a talker of folly, a man you'd see
stretched the half of the day in the brown ferns with his belly to the sun.

WIDOW QUIN. Not working at all?

MAHON. The divil a work, or if he did itself, you'd see him raising up a
haystack like the stalk of a rush, or driving our last cow till he broke her
leg at the hip, and when he wasn't at that he'd be fooling over little birds
he had -- finches and felts -- or making mugs at his own self in the bit of
glass we had hung on the wall.

WIDOW QUIN -- [looking at Christy.] -- What way was he so foolish? It was
running wild after the girls may be?

MAHON -- [with a shout of derision.] -- Running wild, is it? If he seen a red
petticoat coming swinging over the hill, he'd be off to hide in the sticks,
and you'd see him shooting out his sheep's eyes between the little twigs and
the leaves, and his two ears rising like a hare looking out through a gap.
Girls, indeed!

WIDOW QUIN. It was drink maybe?