Page:Darby O'Gill and the Good People by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh (1903).djvu/114

Rh his black wings hiding the sky, and a long streak of lightning for a spear in his fist, but Ould Nick.

Brian Connors, how long are you going to be down-throdden and thrajooced and looked down upon—you and your subjects?’ says he.

Faix, thin, who’s doing that to us?’ asks Thady, standing up and growing excited.

Why,’ says Ould Nick, ‘were you made little pigmies to be the laugh and the scorn and the mock of the whole world?’ he says, very mad; ‘why weren’t you made into angels, like the rest of us?’ he says.

Musha,’ cries Thady, ‘I never thought of that.’

Are you a man or a mouse; will you fight for your rights?’ says Sattin. ‘If so, come with me and be one of us. For we’ll bate them black and blue to-morrow!’ he says. Thady needed no second axing.

I’ll go with ye, Sattin, me dacent man,’ cried he. ‘Wirra! Wirra! To think of how down-throdden we are!’ And with one spring Thady was on Ould Nick’s chowlders, and the two flew away like a humming-bird riding on the back of an aygle.

Take care of yerself, Brian,’ says Thady, ‘and come over to see the fight; I’m to be in it, and I extind you the inwitation,’ he says. Rh