New Comedies Part 2

There is many an estated lord couldn't reach you out a fourpenny bit.

_Darby:_ The grandest house around the seas of Ireland he should have, beautifully made up! You would nearly go astray in it! It wouldn't be known what you could make of it at all! You wouldn't have it walked in a month!

_Taig:_ What is that beside having a range of shops as wide maybe as the street beyond?

_Darby:_ A house would be the capital of the county! One door for the rich, one door for the common! Velvet carpets rolled up, the way there would no dust from the chimney fall upon them. A hundred wouldn't be many standing in a corner of that place! A high bed of feathers, curled hair mattresses. A cover laid on it would be flowery with blossoms of gold!

_Taig:_ Muslin and gauze, cambric and linen! Canton crossbar!

Gla.s.s windows full up of ribbons as gaudy as the crooked bow in the sky! Sovereigns and s.h.i.+llings in and out as plenty as to riddle rape seed. Sure them that do be selling in shops die leaving millions.

_Darby:_ Your man is not so good as mine in his office or in his billet.

_Taig:_ There is the horn of the coach. Get out now till I'll prepare myself. He might chance to come seeking for me here.

_Darby:_ There's a lather of sweat on myself. That's my tin can of water!

_Taig: (Holding can from him.)_ Get out I tell you! I wouldn't wish him to feel the smell of you on the breeze.

_Darby: (Almost crying.)_ You are a mean savage to go keeping from me my tin can and my rag!

_Taig:_ Go wash yourself at the pump can't you?

_Darby:_ That we may never be within the same four walls again, or come under the lintel of the one door! _(He goes out.)_

_Taig: (Calling after him while he takes a suit of clothes from his bag.)_ I'm not like yourself! I have good clothes to put on me, what you haven't got! A body-coat my mother made out--she lost up to three s.h.i.+llings on it,--and a hat--and a speckled blue cravat.

_(He hastily throws off his sweep's smock and cap, and puts on clothes. As he does he sings:)_

All round my hat I wore a green ribbon, All round my hat for a year and a day; And if any one asks me the reason I wore it I'll say that my true love went over the sea!

All in my hat I will stick a blue feather The same as the birds do be up in the tree; And if you would ask me the reason I do it I'll tell you my true love is come back to me!

_(He washes his face and wipes it, looking at himself in the tin can. He catches sight of a straw hat pa.s.sing window.)_

Who is that? A gentleman? _(He draws back.)_

_(Darby comes in. He has changed his clothes and wears a straw hat and light coat and trousers. He is looking for a necktie which he had dropped and picks up. His back is turned to Taig who is standing at the other door.)_

_Taig: (Awed.)_ It cannot be that you are Dermot Melody?

_Darby:_ My father's name was Melody sure enough, till he lost his life in the year of the black potatoes.

_Taig:_ It is yourself I am come here purposely to meet with.

_Darby:_ You should be my mother's sister's son so, Timothy O'Harragha.

_Taig: (Sheepishly.)_ I am that. I am sorry indeed it failed me to be out before you in the street.

_Darby:_ Oh, I wouldn't be looking for that much from you.

_(They are trying to keep their backs to each other, and to rub their faces cleaner.)_

_Taig:_ I wouldn't wish to be anyway troublesome to you. I am badly worthy of you.

_Darby:_ It is in dread I am of being troublesome to yourself.

_Taig:_ Oh, it would be hard for _you_ to be that. Nothing you could put on me would be any hards.h.i.+p at all, if it was to walk steel thistles.

_Darby:_ You have a willing heart surely.

_Taig:_ Any little job at all I could do for you------

_Darby:_ All I would ask of you is to give me my nourishment and my bite.

_Taig:_ I will do that. I will be your serving man.

_Darby:_ Ah, you are going too far in that.

_Taig:_ It's my born duty to do that much. I'll bring your dinner before you, if I can be anyway pleasing to you; you that is used to wealthy people.

_Darby:_ Indeed I was often in a house having up to twenty chimneys.

_Taig:_ You are a rare good man, nothing short of it, and you going as you did so high in the world.

_Darby:_ Any person would go high before he would put his hand out through the top of a chimney.

_Taig:_ Having full and plenty of every good thing.

_Darby:_ I saw nothing so plentiful as soot. There is not the equal of it nouris.h.i.+ng a garden. It would turn every crop blue, being so good.

_Taig: (Weeping.)_ It is a very unkind thing to go drawing chimneys down on me and soot, and you having all that ever was!

_Darby:_ Little enough I have or ever had.

_Taig:_ To be casting up my trade against me, I being poor and hungry, and you having coins and tokens from all the goldpits of the world.

_Darby:_ I wish I ever handled a coin of gold in my lifetime.

_Taig:_ To speak despisingly, not pitiful. And I thinking the chimney sweeping would be forgot and not reproached to me, if you have handled the fooleries and watches of the world, that you don't know the end of your riches!

_Darby:_ I am maybe getting your meaning wrong, your tongue being a little hard and sharp because you are Englified, but I am without new learnments and so I speak flat.

_Taig:_ You to have the millions of King Solomon, you have no right to be putting reflections on me! I would never behave that way, and housefuls to fall into my hand.

_Darby:_ You are striving to put ridicule on me and to make a fool of me. That is a very unseemly thing to do! I that did not ask to go hide the bag or the brush.

_Taig:_ There you are going on again. Is it to the customers in your shops you will be giving out that it was my lot to go through the world as a sweep?

_Darby:_ Customers and shops! Will you stop your funning? Let you quit mocking and making a sport of me! That is very bad acting behaviour.