No More Learning

If he had, he had a mother to come to, and he would know her when he
did see her; and that is what no son of your own could do and he to
meet you at the foot of the gallows.

JOHNNY.

If I did know you, I knew too much of you since the first beginning of
my life! What reward did I ever get travelling with you? What store did
you give me of cattle or of goods? What provision did I get from you by
day or by night but your own bad character to be joined on to my own,
and I following at your heels, and your bags tied round about me!

NANNY.

Disgrace and torment on you! Whatever you got from me, it was more
than any reward or any bit I ever got from the father you had, or any
honourable thing at all, but only the hurt and the harm of the world
and its shame!

JOHNNY.

What would he give you, and you going with him without leave! Crooked
and foolish you were always, and you begging by the side of the ditch.

NANNY.

Begging or sharing, the curse of my heart upon you! It's better off I
was before ever I met with you to my cost!
What was on me at all that I
did not cut a scourge in the wood to put manners and decency on you the
time you were not hardened as you are!

JOHNNY.

Leave talking to me of your rods and your scourges! All you taught me
was robbery, and it is on yourself and not on myself the scourges will
be laid at the day of the recognition of tricks.

PAUDEEN.

'Faith, the pair of you together is better than Hector fighting before
Troy!

NANNY.

Ah, let you be quiet. It is not fighting we are craving, but the easing
of the hunger that is on us and of the passion of sleep. Lend me a
graineen of tobacco now till I'll kindle my pipe--a blast of it will
take the weight of the road off my heart.

[_ANDREW gives her some, NANNY grabs at it. _

BIDDY.

No, but it's to myself you should give it. I that never smoked a pipe
this forty year without saying the tobacco prayer. Let that one say did
ever she do that much.

NANNY.