New Irish Comedies | Page 5

street.
_Darby:_ Oh, I wouldn't be looking for that much from you.
_(They are trying to keep their backs to each other, and to rub their
faces cleaner.)_
_Taig:_ I wouldn't wish to be anyway troublesome to you. I am badly
worthy of you.
_Darby:_ It is in dread I am of being troublesome to yourself.
_Taig:_ Oh, it would be hard for you to be that. Nothing you could put
on me would be any hardship at all, if it was to walk steel thistles.
_Darby:_ You have a willing heart surely.
_Taig:_ Any little job at all I could do for you------
_Darby:_ All I would ask of you is to give me my nourishment and my
bite.
_Taig:_ I will do that. I will be your serving man.
_Darby:_ Ah, you are going too far in that.
_Taig:_ It's my born duty to do that much. I'll bring your dinner before
you, if I can be anyway pleasing to you; you that is used to wealthy
people.
_Darby:_ Indeed I was often in a house having up to twenty chimneys.

_Taig:_ You are a rare good man, nothing short of it, and you going as
you did so high in the world.
_Darby:_ Any person would go high before he would put his hand out
through the top of a chimney.
_Taig:_ Having full and plenty of every good thing.
_Darby:_ I saw nothing so plentiful as soot. There is not the equal of it
nourishing a garden. It would turn every crop blue, being so good.
_Taig: (Weeping.)_ It is a very unkind thing to go drawing chimneys
down on me and soot, and you having all that ever was!
_Darby:_ Little enough I have or ever had.
_Taig:_ To be casting up my trade against me, I being poor and hungry,
and you having coins and tokens from all the goldpits of the world.
_Darby:_ I wish I ever handled a coin of gold in my lifetime.
_Taig:_ To speak despisingly, not pitiful. And I thinking the chimney
sweeping would be forgot and not reproached to me, if you have
handled the fooleries and watches of the world, that you don't know the
end of your riches!
_Darby:_ I am maybe getting your meaning wrong, your tongue being
a little hard and sharp because you are Englified, but I am without new
learnments and so I speak flat.
_Taig:_ You to have the millions of King Solomon, you have no right
to be putting reflections on me! I would never behave that way, and
housefuls to fall into my hand.
_Darby:_ You are striving to put ridicule on me and to make a fool of
me. That is a very unseemly thing to do! I that did not ask to go hide
the bag or the brush.
_Taig:_ There you are going on again. Is it to the customers in your
shops you will be giving out that it was my lot to go through the world
as a sweep?
_Darby:_ Customers and shops! Will you stop your funning? Let you
quit mocking and making a sport of me! That is very bad acting
behaviour.
_Taig:_ Striving to blacken my face again at the time I had it washed
pure white. You surely have a heart of marble.
_Darby:_ What way at all can you be putting such a rascally say out of
your mouth? I'll take no more talk from you, I to be twenty-two degrees
lower than the Hottentots!

_Taig:_ If you are my full cousin Dermot Melody I'll make you quit
talking of soot!
_Darby:_ I'll take no more talk from yourself!
_Taig:_ Have a care now!
_Darby:_ Have a care yourself!
_(Each gives the other a push. They stumble and fall, sitting facing one
another. Darby's hat falls off.)_
_Taig:_ Is it you it is?
_Darby:_ Who else would it be?
_Taig:_ What call had you letting on to be Dermot Melody?
_Darby:_ What letting on? Dermot is my full name, but Darby is the
name I am called.
_Taig:_ Are you a man owning riches and shops and merchandise?
_Darby:_ I am not, or anything of the sort.
_Taig:_ Have you teems of money in the bank?
_Darby:_ If I had would I be sitting on this floor?
_Taig:_ You thief you!
_Darby:_ Thief yourself! Turn around now till I will measure your
features and your face. Yourself is it! Is it personating my cousin
Timothy you are?
_Taig:_ I am personating no one but myself.
_Darby:_ You letting on to be an estated magistrate and my own cousin
and such a great generation of a man. And you not owning so much as
a rood of ridges!
_Taig:_ Covering yourself with choice clothing for to deceive me and
to lead me