Page:Darby O'Gill and the Good People by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh (1903).djvu/154

Rh through the sticky morning fog, Darby and Maureen shivering on the front sate. The Ruler of the Fairies, Maureen’s shawl folded about him, was lying cuddled below in the sthraw. When they saw anyone coming, the fairy-chief would climb into Maureen’s lap, and she’d hould him as though he were a baby.

Small blame to him to be sour and sullen!

“Here I am,” he says to himself, “his Majesty, Brian Connors, King of all the Good People in Ireland, the Master of the Night Time, and having been King for more than five thousand years, with more power after sunset than the Emperor of Greeze or the Grand Turkey of barbayrious parts here am I,” he says, “disguised as a baby, wrapped in a woman’s shawl, and depending for my safety on two simple counthry people—” Then he groaned aloud, “Bad luck to the day I first saw the omadhaun!”

Those were the first words he spoke. But it wasn’t in the little man to stay long ill-natured. At the first shebeen house that they found open Maureen bought for him a bottle of spirits, and this cheered him greatly. The first dhrink warmed him, the second softened him, the third put a chune to the ind of his Rh