It is a large flagged kitchen
with the entrance on the right. The dresser is below the entrance.
There is a large fireplace in the back, and a room door to the left
of the fireplace; the harness-rack is between room door and fireplace.
The yard door is on the left. The table is down from the room door.
There are benches around fireplace_.

_It is the afternoon of a May day. Sally Cosgar is kneeling, near
the entrance chopping up cabbage-leaves with a kitchen-knife. She is
a girl of twenty-five, dark, heavily built, with the expression of a
half-awakened creature. She is coarsely dressed, and has a sacking
apron. She is quick at work, and rapid and impetuous in speech. She
is talking to herself_.

SALLY
Oh, you may go on grunting, yourself and your litter, it won't
put me a bit past my own time. You oul' black baste of a sow, sure
I'm slaving to you all the spring. We'll be getting rid of yourself
and your litter soon enough, and may the devil get you when we lose
you.

_Cornelius comes to the door. He is a tall young man with a slight
stoop. His manners are solemn, and his expression somewhat vacant_.

CORNELIUS
Good morrow, Sally. May you have the good of the day.
_(He comes in)_

SALLY
_(impetuously)_ Ah, God reward you, Cornelius Douras, for
coming in. 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, b