Nora.  No.  He’s the same as ever.  Why?

Larry.  He’s not the same to me.  He used to be very civil to Master Larry:  a deal too civil, I used to think.  Now he’s as surly and stand-off as a bear.

Aunt Judy.  Oh sure he’s bought his farm in the Land Purchase. 
He’s independent now.

Nora.  It’s made a great change, Larry.  You’d harly know the old tenants now.  You’d think it was a liberty to speak t’dhem—­some o dhem. [She goes to the table, and helps to take off the cloth, which she and Aunt Judy fold up between them].

Aunt Judy.  I wonder what he wants to see Corny for.  He hasn’t been here since he paid the last of his old rent; and then he as good as threw it in Corny’s face, I thought.

Larry.  No wonder!  Of course they all hated us like the devil.  Ugh! [Moodily] I’ve seen them in that office, telling my father what a fine boy I was, and plastering him with compliments, with your honor here and your honor there, when all the time their fingers were itching to beat his throat.

Aunt Judy.  Deedn why should they want to hurt poor Corny?  It was he that got Mat the lease of his farm, and stood up for him as an industrious decent man.

Broadbent.  Was he industrious?  That’s remarkable, you know, in an Irishman.

Larry.  Industrious!  That man’s industry used to make me sick, even as a boy.  I tell you, an Irish peasant’s industry is not human:  it’s worse than the industry of a coral insect.  An Englishman has some sense about working:  he never does more than he can help—­and hard enough to get him to do that without scamping it; but an Irishman will work as if he’d die the moment he stopped.  That man Matthew Haffigan and his brother Andy made a farm out of a patch of stones on the hillside—­cleared it and dug it with their own naked hands and bought their first spade out of their first crop of potatoes.  Talk of making two blades of wheat grow where one grew before! those two men made a whole field of wheat grow where not even a furze bush had ever got its head up between the stones.

Broadbent.  That was magnificent, you know.  Only a great race is capable of producing such men.

Larry.  Such fools, you mean!  What good was it to them?  The moment they’d done it, the landlord put a rent of 5 pounds a year on them, and turned them out because they couldn’t pay it.

Aunt Judy.  Why couldn’t they pay as well as Billy Byrne that took it after them?

Larry [angrily].  You know very well that Billy Byrne never paid it.  He only offered it to get possession.  He never paid it.

Aunt Judy.  That was because Andy Haffigan hurt him with a brick so that he was never the same again.  Andy had to run away to America for it.

Broadbent [glowing with indignation].  Who can blame him, Miss Doyle?  Who can blame him?