Staffy: In my opinion there will no pay-day come for this work, but only a thank-you job; a County Clare payment, ’God spare you the health!’

Delia: Let you do it, Ralph so. (Takes potatoes from a sieve.) A roasted potato would be a nice thing to put before him, in the place of this old crust of a loaf.  Put them in now around the sods, the way they will be crispy before him.

Ralph:  (Taking them.) And the way he will see you are a good housekeeper and will mind well anything he might think fit to give.

Delia:  (At clock.) I’ll set to the right time of day the two hands of the clock are pointing a full hour before the sun.  Take, Staffy, that pair of shoes and lessen from them the clay of the land.  That much of doing will not break your heart.  He will be as proud as the fallen angels seeing the way we have all set out before him.

   (A harsh laugh is heard at inner door.  They turn and see Damer
    watching them.)

Ralph: Glory be to God!

Delia: It is Damer was within all the time!

Staffy: What are you talking about, Delia?  It is Patrick you were meaning to say.

Damer: Let her go on prattling out Damer to my face, as it is often she called it behind my shoulders.  Damer the chandler, the miser got the spoil of the Danes, that was mocked at since the time of the Danes.  I know well herself and the world have me christened with that nickname.

Ralph: Ah, it is not to dispraise you they put it on you, but to show you out so wealthy and so rich.

Damer: I am thinking it is not love of my four bones brings you on this day under my thatch?

Staffy: We heard tell you were after being destroyed with a jennet.

Damer: Picking up newses and tidings of me ye do be.  It is short the delay was on you coming.

Delia: And I after travelling through the most of the day on the head of you being wounded and hurt, thinking you to be grieving to see one of your own!  And I in dread of my life stealing past your wicked dog.

Damer: My joy he is, scaring you with his bark!  If it wasn’t for him you would have me clogged and tormented, coming in and bothering me every whole minute.

Delia: There is no person in Ireland only yourself but would have as much welcome for me to-day as on the first day ever they saw me!

Damer: What’s that you are doing with my broom?

Delia: To do away with the spider’s webs I did, where the shelves were looped with them and smothered.  Look at all that came off of that pack of cards.

Damer: What call had you to do away with them, and they belonging to myself?  Is it to bleed to death I should and I to get a tip of a billhook or a slasher?  You and your vagaries to have left me bare, that I would be without means to quench the blood, and it to rise up from my veins and to scatter on every side!