Ralph: You are after being robbed and left bare.

Delia: Not a one penny left of all you have cast into its mouth.

Ralph: Herself made a prophecy you would be robbed with the weakening of your wits, and sure enough it has come about.

Delia: Not a tint of it left.  What now do you say, hearing that?

Damer:  (Sitting down by the hearth and laying down sack.) If it should go it must go.  That was allotted to me in the skies.

Delia: Is it that you had knowledge ere this of it being swept and lost?

Damer: If I had not, why would I have been setting my mind upon eternity and striving to bring to mind a few prayers?  And to have parted with my wicked dog?

Delia: Let you turn around till you will see before you the man that is the robber and the thief!

Simon: Thief yourself!  You that had a plan made up to bring it away.

Damer: Delia, Delia, what was I laying down a while ago?  It is the love of riches has twisted your heart and your mind.

Delia: Is it that you are contented to be made this one’s prey?

Damer: It was foretold for me, I to go stint the body till I near put myself to death without the Lord calling on me, and to lose every whole pound after in one night’s card playing.

Delia: Is it at cards you lost it?

Damer: With that same pack of cards you laid out under my hand, I lost all I had gathered to that one.

Staffy: Well, there is nothing so certain in the world as the running of a fool to a fool.

Delia: Is it taking that lad you are to be a fool?  I thinking him to be as simple as you’d see in the world, and he putting bread upon his own butter as we slept!

Ralph: We to have known all then we know now, we need not have wasted on him our advice.

Damer: Give me, boy, one answer.  What in the world wide put venture into you that made you go face the dog?

Simon: Ah, what venture?  And he being as he is without teeth?

Damer: You know that, what no one in the parish or out of it ever found out till now!  You should have put your hand in his jaw to know that much!  A right lad you are and a lucky lad.  I would nearly wish you of my own blood and of my race.

Delia: Of your own blood is it?

Damer: That is what I would wish.

Delia: Is it that you are taking Simon Niland to be a stranger?

Damer: What Simon Niland?

Delia: Your own nephew and only son to your sister Sarah.

Damer: Do you tell me so!  What way did it fail me to recognise that, and he having daring and spirit the same as used to be rising up in myself in my early time?

Delia: He was born the very year of you coming into possession of this place.