r Broadbent.

BROADBENT [modestly remonstrating]. Oh come! come!

KEEGAN. Yes, I assure you. You are an extremely interesting man.
[He goes out].

BROADBENT [enthusiastically]. What a nice chap! What an
intelligent, interesting fellow! By the way, I'd better have a
wash. [He takes up his coat and cap, and leaves the room through
the inner door].

Nora returns to her chair and shuts up the backgammon board.

AUNT JUDY. Keegan's very queer to-day. He has his mad fit on him.

CORNELIUS [worried and bitter]. I wouldn't say but he's right
after all. It's a contrairy world. [To Larry]. Why would you be
such a fool as to let him take the seat in parliament from you?

LARRY [glancing at Nora]. He will take more than that from me
before he's done here.

CORNELIUS. I wish he'd never set foot in my house, bad luck to
his fat face! D'ye think he'd lend me 300 pounds on the farm,
Larry? When I'm so hard up, it seems a waste o money not to
mortgage it now it's me own.

LARRY. I can lend you 300 pounds on it.

CORNELIUS. No, no: I wasn't putn in for that. When I die and
leave you the farm I should like to be able to feel that it was
all me own, and not half yours to start with. Now I'll take me
oath Barney Doarn's goin to ask Broadbent to lend him 500 pounds
on the mill to put in a new hweel; for the old one'll harly hol
together. An Haffigan can't sleep with covetn that corner o land
at the foot of his medda that belongs to Doolan. He'll have to
mortgage to buy it. I may as well be first as last. D'ye think
Broadbent'd len me a little?

LARRY. I'm quite sure he will.

CORNELIUS. Is he as ready as that? Would he len me five hunderd,
d'ye think?

LARRY. He'll lend you more than the land'll ever be worth to
you; so for Heaven's sake be prudent.

CORNELIUS [judicially]. All right, all right, me son: I'll be
careful. I'm goin into the office for a bit. [He withdraws
through the inner door, obviously to prepare his application to
Broadbent].

AUNT JUDY [indignantly]. As if he hadn't seen enough o borryin
when he was an agent without beginnin borryin himself! [She
rises]. I'll bory him, so I will. [She puts her knitting on the
table and follows him out, with a resolute air that bodes trouble
for Cornelius].

Larry and Nora are left together for the first time since his
arrival. She looks at him with a smile that perishes as she sees
him aimlessly rocking his chair, and reflecting, evidently not
about her, with his l