The Playboy of the Western World and Other Plays by J. M. Synge Page B

PEGEEN MIKE comes in with a milk can and stands aghast. They all spring away from CHRISTY. He goes down left. WIDOW QUIN remains seated.)
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    PEGEEN (angrily, to Sara.) What is it you’re wanting?
    SARA (twisting her apron). An ounce of tobacco.
    PEGEEN. Have you tuppence?
    SARA. I’ve forgotten my purse.
    PEGEEN. Then you’d best be getting it and not fooling us here. (To the WIDOW QUIN, with more elaborate scorn) And what is it you’re wanting, Widow Quin?
    WIDOW QUIN (insolently). A penn‘orth of starch.
    PEGEEN (breaking out). And you without a white
    shift or a shirt in your whole family since the drying of the flood. I’ve no starch for the like of you, and let you walk on now to Killamuck.
    WIDOW QUIN (turning to CHRISTY, as she goes out with the girls). Well, you’re mighty huffy this day, Pegeen Mike, and, you young fellow, let you not forget the sports and racing when the noon is by.
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    (They go out.)
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    PEGEEN (imperiously). Fling out that rubbish and put them cups away. (CHRISTY tidies away in great haste.) Shove in the bench by the wall. (He does so.) And hang that glass on the nail. What disturbed it at all?
    CHRISTY (very meekly). I was making myself decent only, and this a fine country for young lovely girls.
    PEGEEN (sharply). Whisht your talking of girls. (Goes to counter-right.)
    CHRISTY. Wouldn’t any wish to be decent in a place ...
    PEGEEN. Whisht I’m saying.
    CHRISTY (looks at her face for a moment with great misgivings, then as a last effort, takes up a loy, and goes towards her, with feigned assurance). It was with a loy the like of that I killed my father.
    PEGEEN (still sharply). You’ve told me that story six times since the dawn of day.
    CHRISTY (reproachfully). It’s a queer thing you wouldn’t care to be hearing it and them girls after walking four miles to be listening to me now.
    PEGEEN (turning around astonished). Four miles.
    CHRISTY (apologetically). Didn’t himself say there were only four bona fides living in the place?
    PEGEEN. It’s bona fides by the road they are, but that lot came over the river lepping the stones. It’s not three perches when you go like that, and I was down this morning looking on the papers the post-boy does have in his bag. (With meaning and emphasis) For there was great news this day, Christopher Mahon. (Shegoes into room left.)
    CHRISTY (suspiciously). Is it news of my murder?
    PEGEEN (inside). Murder, indeed.
    CHRISTY (loudly). A murdered da?
    PEGEEN (coming in again and crossing right). There was not, but a story filled half a page of the hanging of a man. Ah, that should be a fearful end, young fellow, and it worst of all for a man who destroyed his da, for the like of him would get small mercies, and when it’s dead he is, they’d put him in a narrow grave, with cheap sacking wrapping him round, and pour down quicklime on his head, the way you’d see a woman pouring any frish-frash from a cup.
    CHRISTY (very miserably). Oh, God help me. Are you thinking I’m safe? You were saying at the fall of night, I was shut of jeopardy and I here with yourselves.
    PEGEEN (severely). You’ll be shut of jeopardy in no place if you go talking with a pack of wild girls the like of them do be walking abroad with the peelers, talking whispers at the fall of night.
    CHRISTY (with terror). And you’re thinking they’d tell?
    PEGEEN (with mock sympathy). Who knows, God help you.
    CHRISTY (loudly). What joy would they have to bring hanging to the likes of me?
    PEGEEN. It’s queer joys they have, and who knows the thing they’d do, if it’d make the green stones cry itself to think of you swaying and swiggling at the butt of a rope, and you with a fine, stout neck, God bless you! the way you’d be a half an hour, in great anguish, getting your death.
    CHRISTY (getting his boots and putting them on). If there’s that terror of them, it’d be best, maybe, I went