agon_.

ACT I

_Scene: A room in the King's house at Burren.
Large window at back with deep window seat.
Doors right and left. A small table and some
chairs_.

_Dall Glic: (Coming in with tray, which he puts
on table. Goes back to door.)_ You can come in,
King. There is no one here.

_King: (Coming in.)_ That's very good. I was
in dread the Queen might be in it.

_Dall Glic_: It is a good thought I had bringing
it in here, and she gone to give learning to the
Princess. She is not likely to come this side. It
would be a great pity to annoy her.

_King: (Hastily swallowing a mouthful.)_ Look
out now the door and keep a good watch. The
time she will draw upon me is when I am eating
my little bite.

_Dall Glic_: I'll do that. What I wouldn't
see with my one eye, there's no other would see
with three.

_King_: A month to-day since I wed with her, and
well pleased I am to be back in my own place. I
give you word my teeth are rusting with the want
of meat. On the journey I got no fair play. She
wouldn't be willing to see me nourish myself,
unless maybe with the marrow bone of a wren.

_Dall Glic_: Sure she lays down she is but thinking
of the good of your health.

_King_: Maybe so. She is apt to be paying too
much attention to what will be for mine and for
the world's good. I kept my health fair enough,
and the first wife not begrudging me my enough.
I don't know what in the world led me not to stop
as I was.

_Dall Glic_: It is what you were saying, it was
for the good of the Princess Nuala, and of yourself.

_King_: That is what herself laid down. It
would be a great ease to my mind, she was saying,
to have in the house with the young girl, a far-off
cousin of the King of Alban, and that had been
conversation woman in his Court.

_Dall Glic_: So it might be too. She is a great
manager of people.

_King_: She is that ...I think I hear her
coming.... Throw a cloth over the plates.

_Queen: (Coming in.)_ I was in search of you.

_King_: I thought you were in Nuala's sunny
parlour, learning her to play music and to go through
books.

_Queen_: That is what I thought to do. But I
hadn't hardly started to teach her the principles
of conversation and the branches of relationships
and kindred of the big people of the earth, when
she plucked off the coverings I had put over the
cages, and set open their doors, till the fiery birds
of Sabes and the canaries of the eastern world
were screech