— Bloody tear and ’ounds, Caitríona, sure it doesn’t matter to a person — unless he wants to be silly about it! — who’s going to share a grave with him. “Hoh-roh, my Mary …”
— I’ll bet Nell was at her boastful best the day of the funeral! Showing off and capers, and not the slightest bit of pity for the poor creature who was laid out. She buried him in the Pound Plot, of course? …
— In a grave beside Siúán the Shop …
— That slut, Siúán the Shop. Poor Jack has a bad article beside him. That sharp-tongued jade will slander him. But what would mat-haired Nell care but to throw him down in any old hole …
— Bloody tear and ’ounds, Caitríona, didn’t she get a dry pound grave for him beside Siúán the Shop and Peadar the Pub; didn’t she put a hearse under him; wasn’t there plenty of everything at the wake and funeral, except that she didn’t let anyone fall down drunk; wasn’t there a High Mass for him, as there was for Peadar the Pub and for Siúán the Shop; four or five priests singing, and the Earl above on the gallery with Lord Cockton and that other fowler who comes there …
Bloody tear and ’ounds, what else could she have done? …
— She’s still very fond of the priests and the Lords. But I’ll wager any bet she didn’t shed as much as a tear for the poor man. Arrah, herself and Big Brian’s daughter didn’t give a damn but to get the poor creature out of the house, out of their way …
— Bloody tear and ’ounds, Caitríona, herself and Big Brian’s daughter keened him tearfully. And everybody says they never heard a finer outburst from Bid Shorcha …
— Bid Shorcha! I thought that sponger was confined to her bed now …
— Bloody tear and ’ounds, she is too! Didn’t Big Brian say about herself and Little Cáit and Billyboy the Post: “The priest has rubbed so much oil on those three,” he said, “that there won’t be a drop left for us when we need it …”
— Indeed, that streak of misery Brian doesn’t deserve any oil! And Bid Shorcha came to Nell? …
— Bloody tear and ’ounds, didn’t Nell send a motor car to fetch herself and Little Cáit! But Cáit decided to walk …
— The scent of the corpse, what else? …
—“Bloody tear and ’ounds,” she said, as she was laying Jack out, “if I were to go on the bier-poles tomorrow myself I couldn’t but come, seeing who sent for me.”
— Bid Shorcha the sponger! Little Cáit the grinner! They went to Nell but they wouldn’t come to decent people at all. I wouldn’t begrudge it to Jack the Scológ, the poor creature, only for that other dishevelled little bitch. Jack the Scológ! Jack …
— It won’t be long till somebody will have to keen Bid Shorcha herself. Bloody tear and ’ounds, didn’t she fall on her way home from Jack’s funeral and didn’t they have to send the motor car back to the house with her again …
— Drunk! As she often was …
— She took ill. She didn’t get up since. “Hoh-roh, my Mary, your wares and your bags and belts …”
— Has Nell herself any notion of coming here?
— She says she’s not well. But bloody tear and ’ounds for a story, she came to see me, and I think I never saw her looking so young.
— That’s because she’s delighted she got Jack shifted. Jack! Jack …
— Bloody tear and ’ounds, Caitríona, isn’t it easy for her, with a motor car under her backside to go wherever she wants …
— In Lord Cockton’s motor car. Hasn’t she little decency or shame, to be off gallivanting! Jack the Scológ …
— Bloody tear and ’ounds, she doesn’t have to, Caitríona. She has a car of her own!
— A car of her own?
— The only regret I had about leaving life was that I didn’t get a ride in it. Herself and Peadar had promised to bring me anywhere in the county I wanted, but bloody tear and ’ounds, I lay back with no life left! …
— Ababúna! It can’t be that the motor car is her own, Son of Blackleg! …
— Her own and her son Peadar’s. Bloody tear and ’ounds, Caitríona, didn’t you hear she bought a car for Peadar?
— Oh! She didn’t! She didn’t, Beartla Blackleg …
— Bloody tear and ’ounds, Caitríona, she did. He’s not fit for hard work on account of his leg. He’ll never put much strain on it, even though you wouldn’t notice any lameness in his step. He’s earning great money with the motor car, bringing people places in a hurry.
— I suppose there’s no end to the noise she makes with it going past our house. Amn’t I lucky I’m not alive, Beartla …
— Bloody tear and ’ounds, and she wears a hat any day she travels far from home! …
— Oh! Beartla! Beartla Blackleg! A hat …
— A hat as fancy as the Earl’s wife wears …
— I’m absolutely convinced, Beartla, that she has charmed some of the money out of Baba …
— Bloody tear and ’ounds, Caitríona, of course she has, and for the past four months! Two thousand pounds!
— Two thousand pounds! Two thousand pounds, Beartla Blackleg! …
— Two thousand pounds, Caitríona! Bloody tear and ’ounds, isn’t that how she bought the motor car, and isn’t she going to put a grand big window into the church! …
— She has good reason to be thankful to the priest. But I’d have sworn on the book, Beartla, that Baba wouldn’t take her claws off her money till she died! …
— Bloody tear and ’ounds, isn’t she dead a long while! Nell got a thousand before she died, and another thousand since. She has some odd hundreds to get yet, and she’ll hand them in to the bank down there to be spent on the fellow who’s going to be a priest …
— Ababúna! What my Pádraig will get won’t cover the palm of his hand …
— Some people say he’ll get a lot, but that he won’t get as much as Nell. Bloody tear and ’ounds, he’s so easy-going that he doesn’t query it! …
— He’s been deluded by Nell.
—“Hoh-roh, my Mary, your wares and your bags and belts …”
— Oh! Good God Almighty! Baba’s will. Poor Jack, like a burnt stick, thrown out in the refuse, and her son kept alive by St. John’s Gospel. A new road up to her house. Her son’s son going to be a priest. The pussface building a slate-roofed house. A motor car. Tomás Inside’s land. Jack …
— Bloody tear and ’ounds, Caitríona, nobody has Tomás Inside’s land.
— But isn’t he staying in Nell’s?
— Bloody tear and ’ounds, he is not, not for a long time. He’s in your Pádraig’s house, and Pádraig’s cattle are on his land. He didn’t like the gentry who frequented Nell’s. “By the docks, they’re not half as generous as they’re made out to be,” he told Pádraig. “I wasn’t able to sleep a wink up there. Motor cars roaring outside from night till morn; chopping and hammering and blasting from morn till night. Aren’t they badly off with their slate-roofed houses! By the docks, look at me, and not a dry spot for the bed in my cabin, where the drop wouldn’t hit me between my gob and my eye …”