The Playboy of the Western World

door, with temper. What ails you, or what is it you’re wanting at this hour of the night?

Widow Quin
Coming in a step and peering at Christy. I’m after meeting Shawn Keogh and Father Reilly below, who told me of your curiosity man, and they fearing by this time he was maybe roaring, romping on your hands with drink.


Pegeen
Pointing to Christy. Look now is he roaring, and he stretched away drowsy with his supper and his mug of milk. Walk down and tell that to Father Reilly and to Shaneen Keogh.


Widow Quin
Coming forward. I’ll not see them again, for I’ve their word to lead that lad forward for to lodge with me.


Pegeen
In blank amazement. This night, is it?


Widow Quin
Going over. This night. “It isn’t fitting,” says the priesteen, “to have his likeness lodging with an orphaned girl.” To Christy. God save you, mister!


Christy
Shyly. God save you kindly.


Widow Quin
Looking at him with half-amazed curiosity. Well, aren’t you a little smiling fellow? It should have been great and bitter torments did rouse your spirits to a deed of blood.


Christy
Doubtfully. It should, maybe.


Widow Quin
It’s more than “maybe” I’m saying, and it’d soften my heart to see you sitting so simple with your cup and cake, and you fitter to be saying your catechism than slaying your da.


Pegeen
At counter, washing glasses. There’s talking when any’d see he’s fit to be holding his head high with the wonders of the world. Walk on from this, for I’ll not have him tormented and he destroyed travelling since Tuesday was a week.


Widow Quin
Peaceably. We’ll be walking surely when his supper’s done, and you’ll find we’re great company, young fellow, when it’s of the like of you and me you’d hear the penny poets singing in an August Fair.


Christy
Innocently. Did you kill your father?


Pegeen
Contemptuously. She did not. She hit himself with a worn pick, and the rusted poison did corrode his blood the way he never overed it, and died after. That was a sneaky kind of murder did win small glory with the boys itself. She crosses to Christy’s left.


Widow Quin
With good-humour. If it didn’t, maybe all knows a widow woman has buried her children and destroyed her man is a wiser comrade for a young lad than a girl, the like of you, who’d go helter-skeltering after any man would let you a wink upon the road.


Pegeen
Breaking out into wild rage. And you’ll say that, Widow Quin, and you gasping with the rage you had racing the hill beyond to look on his face.


Widow Quin
Laughing derisively. Me, is it? Well, Father Reilly has cuteness to divide you now. She pulls Christy up. There’s great temptation in a man did slay his da, and we’d best be going, young fellow; so rise up and come with me.


Pegeen
Seizing his arm. He’ll not stir. He’s potboy in this place, and I’ll not have him stolen off and kidnapped while himself’s abroad.


Widow Quin
It’d be a crazy potboy’d lodge him in the shebeen where he works by day, so you’d have a right to come on, young fellow, till you see my little houseen, a perch off on the rising hill.


Pegeen
Wait till morning, Christy Mahon. Wait till you lay eyes on her leaky thatch is growing more pasture for her buck goat than her square of fields, and she without a tramp itself to keep in order her place at all.


Widow Quin
When you see me contriving in my little gardens, Christy Mahon, you’ll swear the Lord God formed me to be living lone, and that there isn’t my match in Mayo for thatching, or mowing, or shearing a sheep.


Pegeen
With noisy scorn. It’s true the Lord God formed you to contrive indeed. Doesn’t the world know you reared a black lamb at your own breast, so that the Lord Bishop of Connaught felt the elements of a Christian, and he eating it after in a kidney stew? Doesn’t the world know you’ve been seen shaving the foxy skipper from France for a threepenny bit and a sop of grass tobacco would wring the liver from a mountain goat you’d meet leaping the hills?


Widow Quin
With amusement. Do you hear her now, young fellow? Do you hear the way she’ll be rating at your own self when a week is by?


Pegeen
To Christy. Don’t heed her. Tell her to go into her pigsty and not plague us here.


Widow Quin
I’m going; but he’ll come with me.


Pegeen
Shaking him. Are you dumb, young fellow?


Christy
Timidly, to Widow Quin. God increase you; but I’m potboy in this place, and it’s here I’d liefer stay.


Pegeen
Triumphantly. Now you have heard him, and go on from this.


Widow Quin
Looking round the room. It’s lonesome this hour crossing the hill, and if he won’t come along with me, I’d have a right maybe to stop this night with yourselves. Let me stretch out on the settle, Pegeen Mike; and himself can lie by the hearth.


Pegeen
Short and fiercely. Faith, I won’t. Quit off or I will send you now.


Widow Quin
Gathering her shawl up. Well, it’s a terror to be aged a score. To Christy. God bless you now, young fellow, and let you be wary, or there’s right torment will await you here if you go romancing with her like, and she waiting only, as they bade me say, on a sheepskin parchment to be wed with Shawn Keogh of Killakeen.


Christy
Going to Pegeen as she bolts the door. What’s that she’s after saying?


Pegeen
Lies and blather, you’ve no call to mind. Well, isn’t Shawn Keogh an impudent fellow to send up spying on me? Wait till I lay hands on him. Let him wait, I’m saying.


Christy
And