(To Widow Quin, suddenly.)
Is my visage astray?
WIDOW QUIN. It is then. You're a sniggering maniac, a child could see.
MAHON -- [getting up more cheerfully.] -- Then I'd best be going to the union
beyond, and there'll be a welcome before me, I tell you (with great pride),
and I a terrible and fearful case, the way that there I was one time,
screeching in a straightened waistcoat, with seven doctors writing out my
sayings in a printed book. Would you believe that?
WIDOW QUIN. If you're a wonder itself, you'd best be hasty, for them lads
caught a maniac one time and pelted the poor creature till he ran out, raving
and foaming, and was drowned in the sea.
MAHON -- [with philosophy.] -- It's true mankind is the divil when your head's
astray. Let me out now and I'll slip down the boreen, and not see them so.
WIDOW QUIN -- [showing him out.] -- That's it. Run to the right, and not a
one will see. [He runs off.]
PHILLY -- [wisely.] You're at some gaming, Widow Quin; but I'll walk after
him and give him his dinner and a time to rest, and I'll see then if he's
raving or as sane as you.
WIDOW QUIN -- [annoyed.] If you go near that lad, let you be wary of your
head, I'm saying. Didn't you hear him telling he was crazed at times?
PHILLY. I heard him telling a power; and I'm thinking we'll have right sport,
before night will fall. [He goes out.]
JIMMY. Well, Philly's a conceited and foolish man. How could that madman
have his senses and his brain-pan slit? I'll go after them and see him turn
on Philly now.
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