Ralph: I don’t know.

Delia: But I know.  He to die, and to make no will, it is ourselves, by rule and by right, that would lay claim to his wealth.

Staffy: So we could do that, and he to come to his end in the bad place, God save the mark!

Delia: Would you say there would be no fear the Government might stretch out and take charge of it, saying him to be outside of his reason?

Ralph: That would be the worst of all.  We to be forced to hire an attorney against them, till we would break one another at law.

Delia: He to be stopping here, and being light in the brain, it is likely some thief travelling the road might break his way in and sweep all.

Ralph: It would be right for us keep some sort of a watch on it.

Staffy: What way would we be sitting here watching it, the same as a hen on a pebble of flint, through a quarter or it might be three quarters of a year?  He might drag for a good while yet, and live and linger into old days.

Delia: To take some cross turn he might, and to come at us violent and maybe tear the flesh from our bones.

Staffy: It is best for us do nothing so, but to leave it to the foreknowledge of God.

Delia: There is but the one thing to do.  To bring it away out of this and to lodge it within in my own house.  We can settle out a place under the hearth.

Staffy: We can make a right division of it at such time as the end will come.

Ralph: What way now will we bring away the crock?

Delia: Let you go outside and be watching the road while Staffy will be bringing out the gold.

Staffy: Ah, I’m not so limber as what Ralph is.  There does be giddiness and delay in my feet.  It might fail me to heave it to a hiding place and to bring it away unknownst.

Delia: Let you go out so and be keeping a watch, and Ralph will put it on the ass-car under sacks.

Ralph: Do it you.  I am not of his own kindred and his family.  Any person to get a sketch of me bringing it away they might nearly take myself to be a thief.

Delia: We are doing but what is fair and is right.

Ralph: Maybe so.  But any neighbour to be questioning me, it might be hard put a skin on the story.

Delia: There is no person to do it but the one. (Calls from the door.) Come in here from the shed, Simon Niland, if the sluggishness is banished from your eyesight and from your limbs.

Simon:  (At door) I was thinking to go travel my road.

Delia: Have you any desire to reach out your hand for to save a mortal life?

Simon:  (Coming in.) Whose life is that?

Staffy: The man of this house that is your uncle and is owner of wealth closed up in a jar.  We now being wittier than himself, that has lost his wits, have our mind made up to bring it away.