far off we'd be from
the good days went before, and that'd be a wonder surely. But I'll never
rest easy, thinking you're a gray, beautiful woman, and myself a pitiful
show.

MARY DOUL. I can't help your looks, Martin Doul. It wasn't myself made
you with your rat's eyes, and your big ears, and your griseldy chin.

MARTIN DOUL -- [rubs his chin ruefully, then beams with delight.] --
There's one thing you've forgot, if you're a cute thinking woman itself.

MARY DOUL. Your slouching feet, is it? Or your hooky neck, or your two
knees is black with knocking one on the other?

MARTIN DOUL -- [with delighted scorn.] -- There's talking for a cute
woman. There's talking, surely!

MARY DOUL -- [puzzled at joy of his voice.] -- If you'd anything but
lies to say you'd be talking to yourself.

MARTIN DOUL -- [bursting with excitement.] -- I've this to say, Mary
Doul. I'll be letting my beard grow in a short while, a beautiful,
long, white, silken, streamy beard, you wouldn't see the like of in the
eastern world.... Ah, a white beard's a grand thing on an old man, a
grand thing for making the quality stop and be stretching out their
hands with good silver or gold, and a beard's a thing you'll never have,
so you may be holding your tongue.

MARY DOUL -- [laughing cheerfully.] -- Well, we're a great pair, surely,
and it's great times we'll have yet, maybe, and great talking before we
die.

MARTIN DOUL. Great times from this day, with the help of the Almighty
God, for a priest itself would believe the lies of an old man would have
a fine white beard growing on his chin.

MARY DOUL. There's the sound of one of them twittering yellow birds do
be coming in the spring-time from beyond the sea, and there'll be a fine
warmth now in the sun, and a sweetness in the air, the way it'll be
a grand thing to be sitting here quiet and easy smelling the things
growing up, and budding from the earth.

MARTIN DOUL. I'm smelling the furze a while back sprouting on the hill,
and if you'd hold your tongue you'd hear the lambs of Grianan, though
it's near drowned their crying is with the full river making noises in
the glen.

MARY DOUL -- [listens.] -- The lambs is bleating, surely, and there's
cocks and laying hens making a fine stir a mile off on the face of the
hill. (She starts.)

MARTIN DOUL. What's that is sounding in the west? [A faint sound of a
bell is heard.]

MARY DOUL. It's not the churches, for the wind's blowing from the sea.