Manus:  Be quiet now and hearken!...

Nurse:  I remember well the first day I saw him in the cradle, two and a score of years back!  Oh, it is glad, and very glad, I’ll be to get word of him!

Manus:  He is come to sensible years....

Nurse:  A golden cradle it was and it standing on four golden balls the very round of the sun!

Manus:  He is out of his cradle now. (Shakes her shoulder.) Let you hearken!  He is in need of your help.

Nurse:  He’ll get it, he’ll get it.  I doted down on that child!  The best to laugh and to roar!

Manus:  (Putting hand on her mouth.) Will you be silent, you hag of a nurse?  Can’t you see that I myself am Manus, the new King of Sorcha?

Nurse:  (Starting back.) Do you say that?  And how’s every bit of you?  Sure I’d know you in any place.  Stand back till I’ll get the full of my eyes of you!  Like the father you are, and you need never be sorry to be that!  Well, I said to myself and you looking in at the window, I would not believe but there’s some drop of king’s blood in that lad!

Manus:  That was not what you said to me!

Nurse:  And wasn’t the journey long on you from Sorcha, that is at the rising of the sun?  Is it your foot-soldiers and your bullies you brought with you, or did you come with your hound and your deer-hound and with your horn?

Manus:  There was no one knew of my journey.  I came bare alone.  I threw a shell in the sea and made a boat of it, and took the track of the wild duck across the mountains of the waves.

Nurse:  And where in the world wide did you get that dress of a cook?

Manus:  It was at a tailor’s place near Oughtmana.  There was no one in the house but the mother.  I left my own clothes in her charge and my purse of gold; I brought nothing but my own blue sword. (Throws open blouse and shows it.) She gave me this suit, where a cook from this house had thrown it down in payment for a drink of milk.  I have no mind any person should know I am a king.  I am letting on to be a cook.

Nurse:  I would sooner you to come as a champion seeking battle, or a horseman that had gone astray, or so far as a poet making praises or curses according to his treatment on the road.  It would be a bad day I would see your father’s son taken for a kitchen boy.

Manus:  I was through the world last night in a dream.  It was dreamed to me that the King’s daughter in this house is in a great danger.

Nurse:  So she is, at the end of a twelvemonth.

Manus:  My warning was for this day.  Seeing her under trouble in my dream, my heart was hot to come to her help.  I am here to save her, to meet every troublesome thing that will come at her.

Nurse:  Oh, my heavy blessing on you doing that!