MRS. TARPEY (_turns and sees them_). Good-morrow, Bartley Fallon; good-morrow, Mrs. Fallon. Well, Bartley, you'll find no cause for complaining to-day; they are all saying it was a good fair.
BARTLEY (_raising his voice_). It was not a good fair, Mrs. Tarpey. It was a scattered sort of a fair. If we didn't expect more, we got less. That's the way with me always: whatever I have to sell goes down and whatever I have to buy goes up. If there's ever any misfortune coming to this world, it's on myself it pitches, like a flock of crows on seed potatoes.
MRS. FALLON. Leave off talking of misfortunes, and listen to Jack Smith that is coming the way, and he singing.
I thought, my first love, There'd be but one house between you and me. And I thought I would find Yourself coaxing my child on your knee. Over the tide I would leap with the leap of a swan. Till I came to the side Of the wife of the red-haired man!
(JACK SMITH _comes in; he is a red-haired man, and is carrying a hayfork._)
MRS. TARPEY. That should be a good song if I had my hearing.
MRS. FALLON (_shouting_). It's "The Red-haired Man's Wife."
MRS. TARPEY. I know it well. That's the song that has a skin on it!
(_She turns her back to them and goes on arranging her apples._)
MRS. FALLON. Where's herself, Jack Smith?
JACK SMITH. She was delayed with her washing; bleaching the clothes on the hedge she is, and she daren't leave them, with all the tinkers that do be passing to the fair. It isn't to the fair I came myself, but up to the Five-Acre Meadow I'm going, where I have a contract for the hay. We'll get a share of it into tramps to-day.
(_He lays down hayfork and lights his pipe._)
BARTLEY. You will not get it into tramps to-day. The rain will be down on it by evening, and on myself too. It's seldom I ever started on a journey but the rain would come down on me before I'd find any place of shelter.
JACK SMITH. If it didn't itself, Bartley, it is my belief you would carry a leaky pail on your head in place of a hat, the way you'd not be without some cause of complaining.
(_A voice heard: "Go on, now, go on out o' that. Go on, I say."_)
JACK SMITH. Look at that young mare of Pat Ryan's that is backing into Shaughnessy's bullocks with the dint of the crowd! Don't be daunted, Pat, I'll give you a hand with her. (_He goes out, leaving his hayfork._)