Hazel:  (After a pause.) Apple pie?

Mineog:  (Sitting down.) Indeed, I am not any way inclined for eating.

   (Takes plate.  John stuffs a cushion into window pane and picks up
    MSS.)

John: Are these belonging to you, Mr. Mineog?

Mineog: Let you throw them on the coals of the fire, where we have no use for them presently.

Hazel:  (Stopping John and taking them.) Thursday is very near at hand.  Two empty columns is a large space to go fill.

Mineog: Indeed I am feeling no way fit to go writing columns.

Hazel:  (Putting his MS. in his pocket.) There is nothing ails them only to begin a good way after the start, and to stop before the finish.

Mineog:  (Putting his MS. in his pocket.) We’ll do that.  We can put such part of them as we do not need at this time back in the shelf of the press.

Hazel:  (Filling glasses and lifting his.) That it may be long before they will be needed!

Mineog:  (Lifting glass.) That they may never be needed!

Curtain

DAMER’S GOLD

  A COMEDY IN TWO ACTS

PERSONS

Patrick Kirwan      CALLED DAMER
Staffy Kirwan         HIS BROTHER
Delia Hessian         HIS SISTER
Ralph Hessian           HER HUSBAND
Simon Niland        THEIR NEPHEW

DAMER’S GOLD

ACT I

Scene:  The kitchen in Damer’s house.  Outer door at back.  Door leading to an inner room to right.  A dresser, a table, and a couple of chairs.  An old coat and hat hanging on the wall.  A knocking is heard at door at back.  It is unlatched from outside.  Delia comes in.

Delia:  (Looking round cautiously and going back to door.) You may come in, Staffy and Ralph.  There would seem to be no person here.

Staffy: Take care would Damer ask us to cross the threshold at all.  I would not ask to go pushing on him, but to wait till he would call to us himself.  He is not an easy led man.

Delia:  (Crossing and knocking at inner door.) He is not in it.  He is likely slipped out unknownst.

Ralph: Herself that thought to find him at the brink of death and nearing his last leap, after what happened him with the jennet.  We heard tell of it as far as we were.

Delia: What ailed him to go own a jennet, he that has means to stable a bay horse would set the windows rattling on the public road, and it sparkling over the flintstones after dark?

Staffy: Sure he owns no fourfooted beast only the dog abroad in its box.  To make its way into the haggard the jennet did, the time it staggered him with a kick.  To forage out some grazing it thought to do, beyond dirt and scutchgrass among the stones.  Very cross jennets do be, as it is a cross man it met with.