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is much alike. Are you ready, Lizzie veen?
Lizzie: Aw, sit a lil while Mrs. Fayle, dear. Sure Kirry here is tired, for she’s had a long thramp from Lherghy Rennie over. Stop an’ take ress for a bit now, an’ then we’ll take her a piece of the road home on our way to meet Jem.
Kirry [hastily]: Never mind me at all. I’ll do all right an’ wait here by the fire a bit.
Mrs. F.: Well, well girls. Don’t let me be hinderin’, but you wont keep me too long, will you? [Sitting down and following Lizzie about with her eyes, as she sets a cup of tea before her, then stirring it absently and looking at Kirry.] You see, Miss Cregeen, we are thinkin’ my son Jem may come home any time now–this very night he may.
Lizzie takes milkcan and goes out.
Kirry: Yes, sure, so Lizzie was tellin’ me. [A pause.] But they’re sayin’ the ship an’ all was lost, Mrs. Fayle.
Mrs. F.: An’ if she was lost, the crathur, there was men saved in the boats.
Kirry [sadly]: There was men lost too, Mrs. Fayle.
Mrs. F.: Aye, the sowles! But look at our Jem the boy he was. No wather in the sea could drown him, an’ wouldn’t he be certain to be picked up at last?
Kirry: He might, too. P’raps by some outlandish crew that was goin’ foreign, an’ be taken roun’ the worl’ with them. Or he might have lost his memory as some of them does.
Mrs. F.: No, no, our Jem had the memory of a horse.
Kirry: But he might have been ill in his mind, too, an’ the memory gone at him. So there’s no sayin’–he may come yet for all. Still he's been gone a long time now, Mrs. Fayle.
Mrs. F.: Over a year now–but I’m not losin’ heart–no, no. Listen here now, an’ I will tell you somethin’. At Hollantide night last year I was out there at th’ oul Cabbal in the little everin’, an’ I was seein’ all the people that was
