Page:Plays in Prose and Verse (1922).djvu/50

34 world and all to have the stone that made that!

. The world and all wouldn’t buy it, ma’am. If I was inclined to sell it the Lord Lieutenant would have given me Dublin Castle and all that’s in it long ago.

. Oh, couldn’t we coax it out of you any way at all?

[drinking more soup]. ‘The whole world wouldn’t coax it out of me except maybe for one thing. . . [looks depressed]. Now I think of it there’s only one reason I might think of parting it at all.

[eagerly]. What reason is that?

. It’s a misfortune that overtakes me, ma’am, every time I make an attempt to keep a pot of my own to boil it in, and I don’t like to be always under a compliment to the neighbours, asking the loan of one. But whatever way it is, I never can keep a pot with me. I had a right to ask one of the little man that gave me the stone. The last one I bought got the bottom burned out of it one night I was giving a hand to a friend that keeps a still, and the one before that I hid under a bush one time I was going into Ennis for the night, and some boys in the town dreamed about it and went looking for treasure in it, and they found nothing but eggshells, but they brought it away for all that. And another one. . ..