Sally enters the breakfast room with her zinc bucket and shovel. She is in her early twenties: alert, saucy, astute. She goes to the French windows and for a few seconds observes Margaret in her enchantment.

Sally Will I clean out the grate now or …?

She tails off because Margaret is in a different world. She goes inside and begins lifting the ashes from the grate.

The second verse of the song comes to an end: Margaret is freed. She picks up her basket and goes towards the breakfast room. Just as she is about to go inside, she catches a glimpse of a bird flying above the thicket stage left. She stops and looks for it. But it has vanished.

She goes into the breakfast room and busies herself putting clean antimacassars on the couch and armchairs.

Must be on the batter again.

Margaret What’s that?

Sally Your da. He has the choir out in the playground. Do you not hear them?

Margaret (sniffing) Some of these aren’t properly aired.

Sally Showing off before the boss here; that’s why he takes them outside – so that the sound will carry up here to The Lodge. Wasting his time: Mr Gore pays no heed to him.

Margaret (antimacassars) Weren’t ironed properly either.

Sally All the same, no teacher ever made them sing as well as your aul fella does – especially when he’s on the batter. And the drunker he is, the better they sing for him. Strange that, isn’t it?

Margaret When you’re finished there, put the chickens back into the henhouse.

Sally You told me to let them out.

Margaret The falcon’s back. I’ll have to get someone up to shoot him. The sergeant will do it for me.

Sally Did I hear Mr Gore leave very early this morning?

Margaret Before breakfast. David and himself. The memorial service for Lord Lifford.

Sally Doesn’t seem all that long, does it?

Margaret This day four weeks exactly.

Sally That long? God, that was one dirty job. And no sign of the peelers lifting anybody either.

Margaret They will in time.

Sally I hope they do. Well, maybe I do … God knows they’ve questioned enough. Every man and boy in the parish must have been dragged in. All the same, he was a bad beast, Lifford. The Lecher Lifford – wasn’t he well named?

Margaret Put a newspaper under that bucket, Sally.

Sally I worked there for a whole year, you know. And I was only twelve at the time. Until my brother Manus came and took me away.

Margaret You’ve told me.

Sally If Lifford had been about that day, Manus would have given the bugger a hammering he wouldn’t have forgot. Listen! Stopped (music). Your da’s probably nipped across to the pub. In all the four years I was at school, he never let me into the choir – just because my name was Cavanagh. ‘Never met a Cavanagh who wasn’t a crow.’

Margaret Our visitors are leaving this evening. You can change the sheets in the guest room; and the towels.