New Comedies Part 13

_Hazel:_ _(Making a snap.)_ Just for one minute.

_Mineog:_ _(Clapping his hand on it.)_ What a hurry you are in!

Stop now till I'll find the place. "Very rarely indeed has been met with so fair and so neighbourly a man."

_Hazel:_ Give me a look at it.

_Mineog:_ What is it ails you? You are uneasy about something.

What is it you are hiding from me?

_Hazel:_ What would I have to hide but that the papers got mixed in some way, and you have in your hand what I wrote about yourself, and not what you wrote about myself?

_Mineog:_ What way did they get into the wrong pocket now?

_Hazel: (Putting MS. in his pocket.)_ Give me back my own and I will give you back your own.

_Mineog:_ I don't know. You are putting it in my mind there might be something underhand. I would like to make sure what did you say about me in the heel. _(Turns over.)_ "He was honest and widely respected." _Was_ honest--are you saying me to be a rogue at this time?

_Hazel:_ That's not fair dealing to be searching through it against my will.

_Mineog:_ "He was trusted through the whole townland." _Was_ trusted--is it that you are making me out to be a thief?

_Hazel:_ Well, follow your own road and take your own way.

_Mineog:_ "----Mr. Mineog leaves no family to lament his loss, but along with the _Tribune_, which he fostered with the care of a father, we offer up prayers for the repose of his soul." _(Stands up.)_ It is a notice of my death you are after writing!

_Hazel:_ You should understand that.

_Mineog:_ An obituary notice! Of myself! Is it that you expect me to quit the living world between this and Thursday?

_Hazel:_ I had no thought of the kind.

_Mineog:_ I'm not stretched yet! What call have you to go offer prayers for me?

_Hazel:_ I tell you I had it put by this long time till I would have occasion to use it.

_Mineog:_ Is it this long time, so, you have been waiting for my death?

_Hazel:_ Not at all.

_Mineog:_ You to kill me to-day and to think to bury me to-morrow!

_Hazel:_ Can't you listen? I was wanting something to fill s.p.a.ce.

_Mineog:_ Would nothing serve you to fill s.p.a.ce but only my own corpse? To go set my coffin making and to put nettles growing on my hearth! Wouldn't it be enough to rob my house or to make an attack upon my means? Wouldn't that fill up the gap?

_Hazel:_ Let you not twist it that way!

_Mineog:_ The time I was in the face of my little dinner to go startle me with a thing of the sort! I'm not worth the ground I stand on! For the _Champion_ of next Thursday! I to be dead ere Thursday!

_Hazel:_ I looked for no such thing.

_Mineog:_ What is it makes you say me to be done and dying? Am I reduced in the face?

_Hazel:_ You are not.

_Mineog:_ Am I yellow and pale and shrunken?

_Hazel:_ Why would you be?

_Mineog:_ Would you say me to be crampy in the body? Am I staggery in the legs?

_Hazel:_ I see no such signs.

_Mineog:_ Is it in my hand you see them? Is it lame or is it freezed-brittle like ice?

_Hazel:_ It is as warm and as good as my own.

_Mineog:_ Let me take a hold of you till you will tell me has it the feel of a dead man's grip.

_Hazel:_ I know that it has not.

_Mineog:_ Is it shaking like a bunch of timber shavings?

_Hazel:_ Not at all, not at all.

_Mineog:_ It should be my hearing that is failing from me, or that I am crippled and have lost my walk.

_Hazel:_ You are roaring and bawling without sense.

_Mineog:_ Let the _Champion_ go to flitters before I will die to please it! I will not give in to it driving me out of the world before my hour is spent! It would hardly ask that of a man would be of no use and no account, or even of a beast of any consequence.

_Hazel:_ Who is asking you to die?

_Mineog:_ Giving no time hardly for the priest to overtake me and to give me the rites of the Church!

_Hazel:_ I tell you there is no danger of you giving up at all!

Every person knows there must some sickness come before death. Some take it from a neighbour and it is put on others by G.o.d.

_Mineog:_ Even so, it's hard say.

_Hazel:_ You have not a ha'p'orth on you. No complaint in the world wide.

_Mineog:_ That's nothing! Sickness comes upon some as sudden as to clap their hands.

_Hazel:_ What are you talking about? You are thinking us to be in the days of the cholera yet!

_Mineog:_ There are yet other diseases besides that.