sibby. Hurry now, John, after all the time you have wasted. Why didn’t you steal up on the old hen that time she was scratching in the dust?
john. Sure I thought one of the chickens would be the tenderest.
sibby. Cock you up with tenderness! All the expense I’m put to! My grand hen I’ve been feeding these five years! Wouldn’t that have been enough to part with? Indeed I wouldn’t have thought of parting with her itself but she had got tired of laying since Easter.
john. Well, I thought we ought to give his Reverence something that would have a little good in it.
sibby. What does the age of it matter? A hen’s a hen when it’s on the table. [Sitting down to pluck chicken.] Why couldn’t the Kernans have given the priest his dinner the way they always do? What did it matter their mother’s brother to have died? It is an excuse they had made up to put the expense of the dinner on me.
john. Well, I hope you have a good bit of bacon to put in the pot along with the chicken.
sibby. Let me alone. The taste of meat on the knife is all that high-up people like the clergy care for, nice genteel people, no way greedy like potato diggers or harvest men.
