No More Learning

Who will come deal with us?

SHEMUS.

They are out of spirit, sir, with lack of food,
Save four or five. Here, sir, is one of these;
The others will gain courage in good time.

A MIDDLE-AGED MAN.

I come to deal if you give honest price.

FIRST MERCHANT.

[_Reading in a parchment. _]

John Maher, a man of substance, with dull mind,
And quiet senses and unventurous heart.
The angels think him safe. Two hundred crowns,
All for a soul, a little breath of wind.

THE MAN.

I ask three hundred crowns. You have read there,
That no mere lapse of days can make me yours.

FIRST MERCHANT.
There is something more writ here--often at night
He is wakeful from a dread of growing poor.
There is this crack in you--two hundred crowns.

[_THE MAN takes them and goes. _

SECOND MERCHANT.

Come, deal--one would half think you had no souls.
If only for the credit of your parishes,
Come, deal, deal, deal, or will you always starve?
Maire, the wife of Shemus, would not deal,
She starved--she lies in there with red wallflowers,
And candles stuck in bottles round her bed.

A WOMAN.

What price, now, will you give for mine?

FIRST MERCHANT.

Ay, ay,
Soft, handsome, and still young--not much, I think.

[_Reading in the parchment. _

She has love letters in a little jar
On the high shelf between the pepper-pot
And wood-cased hour-glass.

THE WOMAN.

O, the scandalous parchment!

FIRST MERCHANT [_reading_].