A BOY It’s the little houses with only three rooms in them that will seem strange.  I’m beginning to wonder myself at their thatch and their mud walls.

ANOTHER GIRL
Houses in bogs and fields.  It was a heart-break trying
to keep them as we’d like to keep them.  A GIRL (at door) Ah, but
I’ll never forget Gortan and the little road to Aughnalee.

ANOTHER GIRL
I think I’ll be lonesome for a long time.  I’ll be
thinking on my brothers and sisters.  I nursed and minded all the
little ones.

FIRST BOY
A girl like you, Ellen, is foolish to be staying here.

SECOND BOY
She’ll be coming in the fall.  We’ll be glad to see you,
Ellen.

ELLEN
I have no friends in America.

FIRST GIRL
I have no friends there, either.  But I’ll get on.  You
could get on better than any of us, Ellen.

SECOND GIRL
She’s waiting for her school.  It will be a little place
by the side of a bog.

THIRD GIRL (going to Ellen) There would be little change in that.  And isn’t it a life altogether different from this life that we have been longing for?  To be doing other work, and to be meeting strange people.  And instead of bare roads and market-towns, to be seeing streets, and crowds, and theaters.

ELLEN (passionately) O what do you know about streets and theaters?  You have only heard of them.  They are finer than anything you could say.  They are finer than anything you could think of, after a story, when you’d be A GIRL You’ll be going after all, Ellen.

ELLEN
I won’t be going.

FIRST GIRL
Well, maybe you’ll be down at Gilroy’s.  We must go now.

  The girls go to the door.  Ellen goes with them.

ONE OF THE BOYS
Phil said that an egg was all he could touch while
he was on the sea.

SECOND BOY
God help us, if that was all Phil could take.

THIRD BOY
Light your pipes now, and we’ll go.

  Ellen has parted with the girls.  The boys light their pipes at fire. 
  They go to door, and shake hands with Ellen.  The boys go out.

ELLEN
Theaters!  What do they know of theaters?  And it’s their like
will be enjoying them.

  Sally comes back.  She is more hurried than before.

SALLY
Ellen!  Ellen!  I have wonders to tell.  Where is Cornelius, at
all?  He’s never here when you have wonders to tell.

ELLEN
What have you to tell?

SALLY Oh, I don’t know how I’ll get it all out!  Matt and father had an odious falling out, and it was about you.  And Matt’s going to America; and he’s to bring you with him.  And Cornelius was saying that if father found out about yourself and Matt—­

ELLEN
Sally, Sally, take breath and tell it.

SALLY
Matt is going to America, like the others, and he’s taking you
with him.