Darby: “Let you hold up the same as Timothy,” she’d give out, and I to stoop my shoulders the time the sun would prey upon my head.  “He that is as straight and as clean as a green rush on the brink of the bog.”

Taig: “It is you will be fit but to blow the bellows,” my mother would say, “the time Dermot will be forging gold.”  I let on the book to have gone astray on me at the last.  Why would I go crush and bruise myself under a weight of learning, and there being one in the family well able to take my cost and my support whatever way it might go?  Dermot that would feel my keep no more than the lake would feel the weight of the duck.

Darby: I seen no use to be going sweating after farmers, striving to plough or to scatter seed, when I never could come anear Timothy in any sort of a way, and he, by what she was saying, able to thrash out a rick of oats in the day.  So it fell out I was thrown on the ways of the world, having no skill in any trade, till there came a demand for me going aloft in chimneys, I being as thin as a needle and shrunken with weakness and want of food.

Taig: I got my living for a while by miracle and trafficking in rabbit skins, till a sweep from Limerick bound me to himself one time I was skinned with the winter.  Great cruelty he gave me till I ran from him with the brush and the bag, and went foraging around for myself.

Darby: So am I going around by myself.  I never had a comrade lad.

Taig: My mother that would hit me a crack if I made free with any of the chaps of the village, saying that would not serve me with Dermot, that had a good top-coat and was brought up to manners and behaviour.

Darby: My own mother that drew down Timothy on me the time she’d catch me going with the lads that had their pleasure out of the world, slashing tops and pebbles, throwing and going on with games.

Taig: I took my own way after, fitting myself for sports and funning, against the time the rich man would stretch out his hand.  Going with wild lads and poachers I was, till they left me carrying their snares in under my coat, that I was lodged for three months in the gaol.

Darby: The neighbours had it against me after, I not being friendly when we were small.  The most time I am going the road it is a lonesome shadow I cast before me.

Taig: (Looking out of the door.) It is on this day I will be making acquaintance with himself.  My mother that sent him a request to come meet me in this town on this day, it being the first of the summer.

Darby: My own mother that did no less, telling me she got word from Timothy he would come meet here with myself.  It is certain he will bring me into his house, she having wedded secondly with a labouring man has got a job at Golden Hill in Lancashire.  I would not recognise him beyond any other one.