Burke? I've heard tell it's the like of that talk you do hear
from men, and they after being a great while on the back hills.

NORA
[Putting out the money on the table.] It's a bad night, and a
wild night, Micheal Dara, and isn't it a great while I am at the
foot of the back hills, sitting up here boiling food for himself,
and food for the brood sow, and baking a cake when the night
falls? (She puts up the money, listlessly, in little piles on
the table.) Isn't it a long while I am sitting here in the
winter and the summer, and the fine spring, with the young
growing behind me and the old passing, saying to myself one time,
to look on Mary Brien who wasn't that height (holding out her
hand), and I a fine girl growing up, and there she is now with
two children, and another coming on her in three months or four.
[She pauses.]

MICHEAL
[Moving over three of the piles.] That's three pounds we have
now, Nora Burke.

NORA
[Continuing in the same voice.] And saying to myself another
time, to look on Peggy Cavanagh, who had the lightest hand at
milking a cow that wouldn't be easy, or turning a cake, and there
she is now walking round on the roads, or sitting in a dirty old
house, with no teeth in her mouth, and no sense and no more hair
than you'ld see on a bit of a hill and they after burning the
furze from it.