Page:Darby O'Gill and the Good People by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh (1903).djvu/116

Rh can help it, no one should fight whin he’s sure to get hurted, onless it’s his juty to fight. To fight for the mere sport of it, when a throuncin’ is sartin, is wasting your time and hurtin’ your repitation. I know there’s plenty thinks different,” he says, p’inting his pipe. “I may be wrong, an’ I won’t argyfy the matther. ’Twould have been betther for myself that day if I had acted on the other principle.

“Howsumever, be the time that everybody was sidestepping mountains and dodging tunderbolts, I says to myself, says I, ‘This is no place fer you or the likes of you.’ So I took all me own people out to the battlements and hid them out of the way on the lower steps. We’d no sooner got placed whin—whish! a black angel shot through the air over our heads, and began falling down, down, down, and down, till he was out of sight. Then a score of his friends came tumbling over the battlements; imagetly hundreds of others came whirling, and purty soon it was raining black wings down into the gulf.

“In the midst of the turmile who should come jumping down to me, all out of breath, but Thady.

It’s all over, Brian; we’re bate scandalous,’ he says, swinging his arms for a spring, and balancing Rh