NORA. It's made a great change, Larry. You'd harly know the old
tenants now. You'd think it was a liberty to speak t'dhem--some o
dhem. [She goes to the table, and helps to take off the cloth,
which she and Aunt Judy fold up between them].

AUNT JUDY. I wonder what he wants to see Corny for. He hasn't
been here since he paid the last of his old rent; and then he as
good as threw it in Corny's face, I thought.

LARRY. No wonder! Of course they all hated us like the devil.
Ugh! [Moodily] I've seen them in that office, telling my father
what a fine boy I was, and plastering him with compliments, with
your honor here and your honor there, when all the time their
fingers were itching to beat his throat.

AUNT JUDY. Deedn why should they want to hurt poor Corny? It was
he that got Mat the lease of his farm, and stood up for him as an
industrious decent man.

BROADBENT. Was he industrious? That's remarkable, you know, in an
Irishman.

LARRY. Industrious! That man's industry used to make me sick,
even as a boy. I tell you, an Irish peasant's industry is not
human: it's worse than the industry of a coral insect. An
Englishman has some sense about working: he never does more than
he can help--and hard enough to get him to do that without
scamping it; but an Irishman will work as if he'd die the moment
he stopped. That man Matthew Haffigan and his brother Andy made a
farm out of a patch of stones on the hillside--cleared it and dug