Mrs. Broderick: That’s right, Miss Joyce.  Keep a good grip of him.  What do you say to him talking a while ago as if his mind was running on some thought to leave Cloon?

Miss Joyce: What way could he leave it?

Hyacinth Halvey: No way at all, I’m thinking, unless there would be a miracle worked by the moon.

Mrs. Broderick: Ah, miracles is gone out of the world this long time, with education, unless that they might happen in your own inside.

Miss Joyce: I’ll go set the table and kindle the fire, and I’ll come back to meet the train with you myself.

(She goes.  A noise heard outside.)

Hyacinth Halvey: What is that now?

Shawn Early:  (At door.) Some noise as of running.

Hartley Fallon:  (Going to door.) It might chance to be some prisoner they would be bringing to the train.

Peter Tannian: No, but some lads that are running.

   (They go out.  H.H. is going too, but Mrs. Broderick goes before him
   and turns him round in doorway.)

Mrs. Broderick: Don’t be coming out now in the dust that was formed by the heat is in the breeze.  It would be a pity to spoil your Dublin coat, or your shirt that is that white you would nearly take it to be blue.

   (She goes out, pushing him in and shutting door after her.)

Cracked Mary: Ha! ha! ha!

Hyacinth Halvey: What is it you are laughing at?

Cracked Mary: Ha! ha! ha!  It is a very laughable thing now, the third most laughable thing I ever met with in my lifetime.

Hyacinth Halvey: What is that?

Cracked Mary: A fine young man to be shut up and bound in a narrow little shed, and the full moon rising, and I knowing what I know!

Hyacinth Halvey: It’s little you are likely to know about me.

Cracked Mary: Tambourines and fiddles and pipes—­melodeons and the whistling of drums.

Hyacinth Halvey: I suppose it is the Carrow fair you are talking about.

Cracked Mary: Sitting within walls, and a top-coat wrapped around him, and mirth and music and frolic being in the place we know, and some dancing sets on the floor.

Hyacinth Halvey: I wish I wasn’t in this place tonight.  I would like well to be going on the train, if it wasn’t for the talk the neighbours would be making.  I would like well to slip away.  It is a long time I am going without any sort of funny comrades.

   (Goes to door.  The others enter quickly, pushing him back.)

Bartley Fallon: Nothing at all to see.  It would be best for us to have stopped where we were.

Mrs. Broderick: Running like foals to see it, and nothing to be in it worth while.

Hyacinth Halvey: What was it was in it?