Nora monologue — In the Shadow of the Glen

(_Putting out the money on the table._) It’s a bad night, and a wild night, Micheal Dara, and isn’t it a great while I am at the foot of the back hills, sitting up here boiling food for himself, and food for the brood sow, and baking a cake when the night falls? (_She puts up the money, listlessly, in little piles on the table._) Isn’t it a long while I am sitting here in the winter and the summer, and the fine spring, with the young growing behind me and the old passing, saying to myself one time, to look on Mary Brien who wasn’t that height (_holding out her hand_), and I a fine girl growing up, and there she is now with two children, and another coming on her in three months or four. (_She pauses._)