Page:Plays in Prose and Verse (1922).djvu/38

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22
THE POT OF BROTH

tramp. What in the earthly world is going on outside? Any one would think it was the Fiannta-h-Eireann at their hunting!

sibby's voice. Stop the gap, let you stop the gap, John. Stop that old schemer of a hen flying up on the thatch like as if she was an eagle!

john's voice. What can I do, Sibby? I all to had my hand upon her when she flew away!

sibby's voice. She's out into the garden! Follow after her! She has the wide world before her now.

tramp. Sibby he called her. I wonder is it Sibby Coneely's house I am in! If that's so it's a bad chance I have of going out heavier than I came in. I often heard of her, a regular slave driver that would starve the rats. A niggard with her eyes on kippeens, that would skin a flea for its hide! It was the bad luck of the world brought me here, and not a house or a village between this and Tubber. And it isn't much I have left to bring me on there. [Begins emptying out his pockets on the chest.] There's my pipe and not a grain to fill it with! There's my handkerchief I got at the coronation dinner! There's my knife and nothing left of it but the handle. [Shakes his pocket out.] And there's a crust of the last dinner I got, and the last I'm likely to get till to-morrow.