Conan:  I’m good enough, I tell you!

Celia:  To cut the wisp from the back of your poll.

Conan:  You will not cut it!

Celia:  And you’ll go into the grandeurs of Dublin and you being as neat as an egg.

Conan:  (With a roar.) Leave meddling with my hair.  I that can change the world with one turn of my hand!

Celia:  Wait till I’ll find the scissors!  That’s not the way to be going showing off in the town, if you were all the saints and Druids of the universe!

Conan:  (Breaking free and rushing out.) My seven thousand curses on the minute when I didn’t leave you as you were. (Goes.)

Celia:  (Looking at Mother.) There’s meal on your dress from the cake you’re after putting in the oven—­where now did that bellows fall from? (Taking up bellows.) It comes as handy as a gimlet.  There (blows the meal off), that now will make a big difference in you.

Rock:  (Seizing bellows.) Leave now that down out of your hand.  Let you go looking for a scissors!

(Celia goes off singing “The Beautiful City of Sligo.")

Mother:  (Sitting down.) I’m thinking it’s seven years to-day, James Rock, since you took a lend of my clock.

Rock:  You’re raving!  What call would I have to ask a lend of your clock?

Mother:  The way you would rise in time for the fair of Feakle in the morning.

Rock:  Did I now?

Mother:  You did, and that’s my truth.  I was standing here, and you were standing there, and Celia that was but ten years was sucking the sugar off a spoon I was after putting in a bag that had come from the shop, for to put a grain into my tea.

Rock:  (Sneering.) Well now, didn’t your memory get very sharp!

Mother:  You thought I had it forgot, but I remember it as clear as pictures.  The time it stood at was seven minutes after four o’clock, and I never saw it from that day till now.  This very day of the month it was, the year of the black sheep having twins.

Rock:  It was but an old clock anyway.

Mother:  If it was it is seven years older since I laid an eye on it.  And it’s kind father for you robbing me, where it’s often you robbed your own mother, and you stealing away to go cardplaying the half crowns she had hid in the churn.

Rock:  Didn’t you get very wicked and hurtful, you that was a nice class of a woman without no harm!

Flannery:  Ah, Ma’am, you that was easy-minded, it is not kind for you to be a scold.

Mother:  And another thing, it was the same day where Michael Flannery (turns to him) came in an’ told me of you being grown so covetous you had made away with your dog, by reason you begrudged it its diet.

Rock:  (To Flannery.) You had a great deal to say about me!