MARTIN.  If I had but a couple of pounds, I could buy a little ass and earn a share of money bringing turf to the big town; or I could job at the fairs.  But, my grief, we haven’t it, or ten shillings.

MARY.  And if I could get but a few hens, and what would feed them, I could be selling the eggs or rearing chickens.  But unless God would work a miracle for us, there’s no chance of that itself. (She wipes her eyes with her apron.)

MARTIN.  Don’t be crying, Mary.  You belong to me now; am I not rich so long as you belong to me?  Whatever place I will go to I will know you are thinking of me.

MARY.  That is a true word you say, Martin; I will never be poor so long as I know you to be thinking of me.  No riches at all would be so good as that.  There’s a line my poor father used to be saying:—­

    ’Cattle and gold, store and goods,
    They pass away like the high floods.’

It was Raftery, the blind man, said that.  I never saw him; but my father used to be talking of him.

MARTIN.  I don’t care what he said.  I wish we had goods and store.  He said the exact contrary another time:—­

    ’Brogues in the fashion, a good house,
    Are better than the bare sky over us.’

MARY.  Poor Raftery! he’d give us all that if he had the chance.  He was always a good friend to the poor.  I heard them saying the other day he was lying in his sickness at some place near Killeenan, and near his death.  The Lord have mercy on him!

MARTIN.  The Lord have mercy on him, indeed.  Come now, Mary, eat the first bit in your own house.  I’ll take the eggs off the fire.

(He gets up and goes to the fire.  There is a knock at the half-door, and an old ragged, patched fiddler puts in his head.)

FIDDLER.  God save all here!

MARY (standing up).  Aurah, the poor man, bring him in.

MARTIN.  Let there be sense on you, Mary; we have not anything at all to give him.  I will tell him the way to the Brennans’ house:  there will be plenty to find there.

MARY.  Indeed and surely I will not put him from this door.  This is the first time I ever had a house of my own; and I will not send anyone at all from my own door this day.

MARTIN.  Do as you think well yourself. (MARY goes to the door and opens it.) Come in, honest man, and sit down, and a hundred welcomes before you. (The old man comes in, feeling about him as if blind.)

MARY.  O Martin, he is blind.  May God preserve him!

OLD MAN.  That is so, acushla; I am in my blindness; and it is a tired, vexed, blind man I am.  I am going and ever going since morning, and I never found a bit to eat since I rose.

MARY.  You did not find a bit to eat since morning!  Are you starving?

OLD MAN.  Oh, indeed, there was food to be got if I would take it; but the bit that does not come from a willing heart, there would be no taste on it; and that is what I did not get since morning; but people putting a potato or a bit of bread out of the door to me, as if I was a dog, with the hope I would not stop, but would go away.