- Moki: Mahana, you ugly. What are you hiding up there for ? Today is the day of bargaining. Come down and be ready to greet your husband to be.
- Moki: Three cows.
- [Everyone laughs]
- Johnny Lingo: Three cows is many, but not enough for Mahana. I will pay eight cows.
- [everyone is astonished]
- Johnny Lingo: I will bring them in the morning.
- [Some boys hiding in the bushes at the wedding feast]
- village boys: Johnny Lingo had a cow, trade it for an ugly wife, Johnny Lingo's married now, he'll be sorry all his life
- [Mr. Harris hands Tulo the mirror that Johnny has ordered as a gift for Mahana]
- Trader Harris: How do you like that Tulo .
- Tulo: Ah, it is beautiful, Mahana's face will crack the glass.
- Johnny Lingo: Then, always and forever when they speak of marriage settlements it will be remembered that Johnny Lingo paid 8 cows for Mahana.
- [Johnny walks away from Mr. Harris's outpost]
- Trader Harris: So that's it. He's neither crazy nor blind. He's just vain. Poor vain fool...
- [At Johnny's hut]
- Trader Harris: Johnny, I can't get over it, she's beautiful .
- Johnny Lingo: I have loved her ever since we were children, she was always beautiful. But tell me, do you think 8 cows was too high a price for her ?
- Trader Harris: Oh, no.
- [looking at Mahana in the distance]
- Moki's Counselor: [attempting to get Mahana out of a tree] Mahana, you are a very fortunate girl, all the other girls in the village envy you.
- Mahana: They mock me.
- Moki's Counselor: They would change places with you, every one of them. Look, be a good girl and come down for the bargaining.
- Trader Harris: I see. In her father's hut, Mahana believed she was worth nothing.
- [last lines]
- Johnny Lingo: Yes, and now she knows she is worth more than any other woman on the island.
- Johnny Lingo: Think what it must mean to a woman, her future husband meeting with her father to discuss the lowest price for which she can be bought. And later, when the women of the village gather, they boast of what their husbands paid for them - three cows, or five. How does she feel, the woman who was sold for one, or two? This could not happen to my Mahana.
- Trader Harris: Johnny, I've misjudged you. I thought you were thinking only of how important you would look to your friends, paying 8 cows for a wife. I didn't know you wanted to make Mahana happy.
- Johnny Lingo: More than happy, Mr. Harris. I wanted her to be an eight-cow woman.