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MRS O’FLAHERTY

. Oh fie for shame, Dinny! why would you say the like of that of a decent honest girl, and one of the Driscolls too?

O’FLAHERTY

. Why wouldn’t I say it? She’s thinking of nothing but to get me out there again to be wounded so that she may spend my pension, bad scran to her!

MRS O’FLAHERTY

. Why, what’s come over you, child, at all at all?

O’FLAHERTY

. Knowledge and wisdom has come over me with pain and fear and trouble. I’ve been made a fool of and imposed upon all my life. I thought that covetious sthreal in there was a walking angel; and now if ever I marry at all I’ll marry a Frenchwoman.

MRS O’FLARERTY [fiercely]. You’ll not, so; and don’t you dar repeat such a thing to me.

O’FLAHERTY

. Won’t I, faith! I’ve been as good as married to a couple of them already.

MRS O’FLAHERTY

. The Lord be praised, what wickedness have you been up to, you young blackguard?

O’FLAHERTY

. One of them Frenchwomen would cook you a meal twice in the day and all days and every day that Sir Pearce himself might go begging through Ireland for, and never see the like of. I’ll have a French wife, I tell you; and when I settle down to be a farmer I’ll have a French farm, with a field as big as the continent of Europe that ten of your dirty little fields here wouldn’t so much as fill the ditch of.

MRS O’FLAHERTY

[furious]. Then it’s a French mother you may go look for; for I’m done with you.

O’FLAHERTY

. And it’s no great loss you’d be if it wasn’t for my natural feelings for you; for it’s only a silly ignorant old countrywoman you are with all your fine talk about Ireland: you that never stepped beyond the few acres of it you were born on!

MRS O’FLAHERTY

[tottering to the garden seat and showing signs of breaking down]. Dinny darlint, why are you like this to me? What’s happened to you?

O’FLAHERTY

[gloomily]. What’s happened to everybody? that’s what I want to know. What’s happened to you that I thought all the world of and was afeard of? What’s happened to Sir Pearce, that I thought was a great general, and that I now see to be no more fit to command an army than an old hen? What’s happened to Tessie, that I was mad to marry a year ago, and that I wouldn’t take now with all Ireland for her fortune? I tell you the world’s creation is crumbling in ruins about me; and then you come and ask what’s happened to me?

MRS O’FLAHERTY

[giving way to wild grief]. Ochone! ochone! my son’s turned agen me. Oh, what’ll I do at all at all? Oh! oh! oh! oh!

SIR PEARCE

[running out of the house]. What’s this infernal noise? What on earth is the matter?

O’FLAHERTY

. Arra hold your whisht, mother. Don’t you see his honor?

MRS O’FLAHERTY

. Oh, Sir, I’m ruined and destroyed. Oh, won’t you speak to Dinny, Sir: I’m heart scalded with him. He wants to marry a Frenchwoman on me, and to go away and be a foreigner and desert his mother and betray his country. It’s mad he is with the roaring of the cannons and he killing the Germans and the Germans killing him, bad cess to them! My boy is taken from me and turned agen me; and who is to take care of me in my old age after all I’ve done for him, ochone! ochone!

O’FLAHERTY

. Hold your noise, I tell you. Who’s going to leave you? I’m going to take you with me. There now: does that satisfy you?