I'm left to-day, when it was I did tend him from his hour of birth, and he a dunce never reached his second book, the way he'd come from school, many's the day, with his legs lamed under him, and he blackened with his beatings like a tinker's ass. It's a hard story, I'm saying, the way some do have their next and nighest raising up a hand of murder on them, and some is lonesome getting their death with lamentation in the dead of night.
WIDOW QUIN, not knowing what to say.
To hear you talking so quiet, who'd know you were the same fellow we seen pass to-day?
MAHON.
I'm the same surely. The wrack and ruin of three score years; and it's a terror to live that length, I tell you, and to have your sons going to the dogs against you, and you wore out scolding them, and skelping them, and God knows what.
PHILLY, to Jimmy.
He's not raving. (To Widow Quin.) Will you ask him what kind was his son?
WIDOW QUIN, to Mahon, with a peculiar look.
Was your son that hit you a lad of one year and
92
