MARTIN DOUL. If it was a queer time itself it was great joy and
pride I had the time I'd hear your voice speaking and you passing
to Grianan (beginning to speak with plaintive intensity), for
it's of many a fine thing your voice would put a poor dark fellow
in mind, and the day I'd hear it it's of little else at all I
would be thinking.

MOLLY BYRNE. I'll tell your wife if you talk to me the like of
that. . . . You've heard, maybe, she's below picking nettles for
the widow O'Flinn, who took great pity on her when she seen the
two of you fighting, and yourself putting shame on her at the
crossing of the roads.

MARTIN DOUL -- [impatiently.] -- Is there no living person can
speak a score of words to me, or say "God speed you," itself,
without putting me in mind of the old woman, or that day either
at Grianan?

MOLLY BYRNE -- [maliciously.] -- I was thinking it should be a
fine thing to put you in mind of the day you called the grand day
of your life.

MARTIN DOUL. Grand day, is it? (Plaintively again, throwing
aside his work, and leaning towards her.) Or a bad black day
when I was roused up and found I was the like of the little
children do be listening to the stories of an old woman, and do
be dreaming after in the dark night that it's in grand houses of
gold they are, with speckled horses to ride, and do be waking
again, in a short while, and they destroyed with the cold, and
the thatch dripping, maybe, and the starved ass braying in the