d for all.
You'll talk to me and pray for me by the name of Pether Keegan,
so you will. And when you're angry and tempted to lift your hand
agen the donkey or stamp your foot on the little grasshopper,
remember that the donkey's Pether Keegan's brother, and the
grasshopper Pether Keegan's friend. And when you're tempted to
throw a stone at a sinner or a curse at a beggar, remember that
Pether Keegan is a worse sinner and a worse beggar, and keep the
stone and the curse for him the next time you meet him. Now say
God bless you, Pether, to me before I go, just to practise you a
bit.

PATSY. Sure it wouldn't be right, Fadher. I can't--

KEEGAN. Yes you can. Now out with it; or I'll put this stick into
your hand an make you hit me with it.

PATSY [throwing himself on his knees in an ecstasy of adoration].
Sure it's your blessin I want, Fadher Keegan. I'll have no luck
widhout it.

KEEGAN [shocked]. Get up out o that, man. Don't kneel to me: I'm
not a saint.

PATSY [with intense conviction]. Oh in throth yar, sir. [The
grasshopper chirps. Patsy, terrified, clutches at Keegan's hands]
Don't set it on me, Fadher: I'll do anythin you bid me.

KEEGAN [pulling him up]. You bosthoon, you! Don't you see that it
only whistled to tell me Miss Reilly's comin? There! Look at her
and pull yourself together for shame. Off widja to the road:
you'll be late for the car if you don't make haste [bustling him
down the hill]. I can see the dust of it in the gap already.

PATSY. The Lord save us! [He goes down the hill towards the road
like a haunted man].

Nora Reilly comes down the hill. A slight weak woman in a pretty
muslin print gown [her best], she is a figure commonplace enough
to Irish eyes; but on the inhabitants of fatter-fed, crowded,
hustling and bustling modern countries she makes a very
different impression. The absence of any symptoms of coarseness
or hardness or appetite in her, her comparative delicacy of
manner and sensibility of apprehension, her thin hands and
slender figure, her travel accent, with the caressing plaintive
Irish melody of her speech, give her a charm which is all the
more effective because, being untravelled, she is unconscious of
it, and never dreams of deliberately dramatizing and exploiting
it, as the Irishwoman in England does. For Tom Broadbent
therefore, an attractive woman, whom he would even call ethereal.
To Larry Doyle, an everyday woman fit only for the eighteenth
century, helpless,