Page:Darby O'Gill and the Good People by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh (1903).djvu/131

Rh “the counthry-side is full of goats, and all you have to do is to take your pick and help yourself. You’re making game of us, King.”

The King shook his head. “The Good People have been thrying for years to capture one,” says he. “I’ve been bunted into ditches by the villains; I’ve been trun over hedges by them; I had to leap on the back of Anthony Sullivan’s goat, and with two hundred of me subjects in full cry behind, ride him all night long, houlding by his horns to kape him from getting at me and disthroying me entirely. The jumps he took with me that night were thraymendous. It was from the cow-shed to the sthraw-stack, from the sthraw-stack to the house-top, and from there down to the ground agin, and then hooraying an’ hoorooing, a race up the mountain-side. But,” says the King, kind o’ sniffling an’ turning to the fire, “we love the ground he walks upon,” says he.

“Tare an’ ouns!” says Darby, “why don’t you put your spell on one of them?”

“You don’t know them,” says the King. “We can’t put the black spell on thim—they’re not Christian bastes, like pigs or cows. Whin it comes to animals, we can only put our come ’ither on cattle and Rh