threshing machine.

MARY (_taking the tray to the table and starting to get ready to wash
up the cups_). I do believe sometimes that Uncle Dan's a lazy man.

KATE (_assisting her at the washing and stopping as if astonished at
the statement_). And is it only now you're after finding that out!
Sure the whole countryside knowed it this years and years.

MARY (_sharply_). The whole countryside has no business to talk about
what doesn't concern it.

KATE. Oh, well, people are bound to talk, Miss.

MARY. But then Uncle Dan is awfully clever. He's got the whole brains
of the Murrays, so father says, and then, besides that, he is a grand
talker.

KATE. Aye. He can talk plenty. Sure Sarah McMinn, that lives up the
Cut, says its a shame the way he's going on this twenty years and
more, never doing a hand's turn from morning to night, and she says
she wonders your poor father stands him and his nonsense.

MARY. Who said that?

KATE. Sarah McMinn told Johnny McAndless that yesterday.

MARY. Sarah McMinn? Pooh! That hard, mean, old thing. No. I believe in
Uncle Dan and so does father. He'll make a name for himself yet.

KATE. Well, it's getting near time he done it.

MARY. And that Sarah McMinn they say just keeps her brother in
starvation, and she just says nasty things like that about Uncle Dan
because he doesn't like her.

KATE. Aye. He never did like people as seen through him, not but she
is a mean old skin-a-louse. (_The voice of_ DANIEL MURRAY _is heard
calling from within._) He's up, Miss.

MARY. Are you up, uncle?

(DAN MURRAY _opens the door from the inner apartments and comes into
the kitchen. He is carelessly dressed and sleepy-looking as if just
out of bed, wears a muffler and glasses, and appears to be some fifty
years of age._)

DANIEL. Yes. Did the _Whig_ come yet?

MARY. Yes. I put it in your workshop.

DANIEL (_glancing at the clock_). Bless my heart, it's half-past one!

MARY (_reproachfully_). It is, indeed, uncle.

DANIEL. Well! Well! Time goes round, Mary. Time goes round. (_Kate
picks up the bucket and goes out by the yard door._) Where's your
father? (_He crosses over to the workshop door._)

MARY. He's out working with Sam Brown at the threshing all morning
since seven o'clock.

DANIEL. Well! Well! A very industrious man is John Murray. Very. But
lacking in brains, my dear--lacking in brains. Kind, good-hearted,
easy-going, but--ah! well, one can't help these things. (_He goes
t