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BRIDGET

. You seem well pleased to be handling the money, Peter.

PETER

. Indeed, I wish I had had the luck to get a hundred pounds, or twenty pounds itself, with the wife I married.

BRIDGET

. Well, if I didn’t bring much I didn’t get much. What had you the day I married you but a flock of hens and you feeding them, and a few lambs and you driving them to the market at Ballina? [She is vexed and bangs a jug on the dresser.] If I brought no fortune, I worked it out in my bones, laying down the baby, Michael that is standing there now, on a stook of straw, while I dug the potatoes, and never asking big dresses or anything but to be working.

PETER

. That is true, indeed. [He pats her arm.]

BRIDGET

. Leave me alone now till I ready the house for the woman that is to come into it.

PETER

. You are the best woman in Ireland, but money is good, too. [He begins handling the money again and sits down.] I never thought to see so much money within my four walls. We can do great things now we have it. We can take the ten acres of land we have a chance of since Jamsie Dempsey died, and stock it. We will go to the fair of Ballina to buy the stock. Did Delia ask any of the money for her own use, Michael?

MICHAEL

. She did not, indeed. She did not seem to take much notice of it, or to look at it at all.

BRIDGET

. That’s no wonder. Why would she look at it when she had yourself to look at, a fine, strong young man? It is proud she must be to get you, a good steady boy that will make use of the money, and not be running through it or spending it on drink like another.

PETER

. It’s likely Michael himself was not thinking much of the fortune either, but of what sort the girl was to look at.

MICHAEL

[coming over towards the table]. Well, you would like a nice comely girl to be beside you, and to go walking with you. The fortune only lasts for a while, but the woman will be there always.

[Cheers.]

PATRICK

[turning round from the window]. They are cheering again down in the town. Maybe they are landing horses from Enniscrone. They do be cheering when the horses take the water well.

MICHAEL

. There are no horses in it. Where would they be going and no fair at hand? Go down to the town, Patrick, and see what is going on.

PATRICK

[opens the door to go out, but stops for a moment on the threshold]. Will Delia remember, do you think, to bring the greyhound pup she promised me when she would be coming to the house?

MICHAEL

. She will surely.

[PATRICK goes out, leaving the door open.]

PETER

. It will be Patrick’s turn next to be looking for a fortune, but he won’t find it so easy to get it and he with no place of his own.

BRIDGET

. I do be thinking sometimes, now things are going so well with us, and the Cahels such a good back to us in the district, and Delia’s own uncle a priest, we might be put in the way of making Patrick a priest some day, and he so good at his books.

PETER

. Time enough, time enough; you have always your head full of plans, Bridget.

BRIDGET

. We will be well able to give him learning, and not to send him trampling the country like a poor scholar that lives on charity.