MARTIN DOURAS
I should be going home to see Ellen.

MURTAGH COSGAR
If she’s going, you can’t stay her.  Let you keep here.

MARTIN DOURAS
She’ll be wondering what happened to me.

MURTAGH COSGAR
Divil a bit it will trouble her.  You’re going to the
fair anyway?

MARTIN DOURAS
I have no heart to be going into a fair.

MURTAGH COSGAR It’s myself used to have the great heart.  Driving in on my own side-car, and looking down on the crowd of them.  It’s twenty years since I took a sup of drink.  Oh, we’ll have drinking to-morrow that will soften the oul’ skin of you.  You’ll be singing songs about the Trojans to charm every baste in the fair.

MARTIN DOURAS
We’re both old men, Murtagh Cosgar.

MURTAGH COSGAR
And is there any reason in your scholarship why oul’
men should be dry men?  Answer me that!

MARTIN DOURAS
I won’t answer you at all, Murtagh Cosgar.  There’s no
use in talking to you.

MURTAGH COSGAR
Put it down on a piece of paper that oul’ men should
have light hearts when their care is gone from them.  They should be
like—­

MARTIN DOURAS
There’s nothing in the world like men with their
rearing gone from them, and they old.

  Sally comes to the door.  She enters stealthily.

MURTAGH COSGAR
Ha, here’s one of the clutch home.  Well, did you see
that brother of yours?

SALLY
I did.  He’ll be home soon, father.

MURTAGH COSGAR
What’s that you say?  Were you talking to him?  Did he
say he’d be home?

SALLY
I heard him say it, father.

MARTIN DOURAS
God bless you for the news, Sally.

MURTAGH COSGAR
How could he go and he the last of them?  Sure it
would be against nature.  Where did you see him, Sally?

SALLY
At Martin Douras’s, father.

MURTAGH COSGAR
It’s that Ellen Douras that’s putting him up to all
this.  Don’t you be said by her, Sally.

SALLY
No, father.

MURTAGH COSGAR
You’re a good girl, and if you haven’t wit, you have
sense.  He’ll be home soon, did you say?

SALLY
He was coming home.  He went round the long way, I’m thinking. 
Ellen Douras was vexed with him, father.  She isn’t going either,
Matt says, but I’m thinking that you might as well try to keep a
corncrake in the meadow for a whole winter, as to try to keep Ellen
Douras in Aughnalee.

MURTAGH COSGAR
Make the place tidy for him to come into.  He’ll have
no harsh words from me. (He goes up to the room)

SALLY
Father’s surely getting ould.

MARTIN DOURAS (sitting down) He’s gone up to rest himself, God help him.  Sally, a stor, I’m that fluttered, I dread going into my own house.

SALLY
I’ll get ready now, and let you have a good supper before you
go to the fair.