JIMMY. I'll hold him.
MAHON [struggling.] Let me out! Let me out, the lot of you! till I have my
vengeance on his head to-day.
WIDOW QUIN -- [shaking him, vehemently.] -- That's not your son. That's a man
is going to make a marriage with the daughter of this house, a place with fine
trade, with a license, and with poteen too.
MAHON -- [amazed.] That man marrying a decent and a moneyed girl! Is it mad
yous are? Is it in a crazy-house for females that I'm landed now?
WIDOW QUIN. It's mad yourself is with the blow upon your head. That lad is
the wonder of the Western World.
MAHON. I seen it's my son.
WIDOW QUIN. You seen that you're mad. (Cheering outside.) Do you hear them
cheering him in the zig-zags of the road? Aren't you after saying that your
son's a fool, and how would they be cheering a true idiot born?
MAHON -- [getting distressed.] -- It's maybe out of reason that that man's
himself. (Cheering again.) There's none surely will go cheering him. Oh, I'm
raving with a madness that would fright the world! (He sits down with his
hand to his head.) There was one time I seen ten scarlet divils letting on
they'd cork my spirit in a gallon can; and one time I seen rats as big as
badgers sucking the life blood from the butt of my lug; but I never till this
day confused that dribbling idiot with a likely man. I'm destroyed surely.
WIDOW QUIN. And who'd wonder when it's your brain-pan that is gaping now?
MAHON. Then the blight of the sacred drought upon myself and him, for I never
went mad to this day, and I not three weeks with the Limerick girls drinking
myself silly, and parlatic from the dusk to dawn.
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