I'm that busy keeping food to a sow and a litter of pigs
that I couldn't get beyond the gate to see any one.
CORNELIUS
_(solemnly)_ You're a good girl, Sally. You're not like
some I know. There are girls in this parish who never put hands to a
thing till evening, when the boys do be coming in. Then they begin
to stir themselves the way they'll be thought busy and good about a
house.
SALLY
_(pleased and beginning to chop again with renewed energy)_ Oh,
it's true indeed for you, Cornelius. There are girls that be decking
themselves, and sporting are themselves all day.
CORNELIUS
I may say that I come over to your father's, Murtagh
Cosgar's house, this morning, thinking to meet the men.
SALLY
What men, Cornelius Douras?
CORNELIUS
Them that are going to meet the landlord's people with an
offer for the land. We're not buying ourselves, unfortunately, but
this is a great day--the day of the redemption, my father calls
it--and I'd like to have some hand in the work if it was only to say
a few words to the men.
SALLY
It's a wonder Martin, your father isn't on the one errand with
you.
CORNELIUS
We came out together, but the priest stopped father and us
on the road. Father Bartley wanted his advice, I suppose. Ah, it's a
pity the men won't have some one like my father with them! He was in
gaol for the Cause. Besides, he's a well-discoursed man, and a
reading man, and, moreover, a man with a classical knowledge of
English, Latin, and the Hibernian vernacular.
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