Page:Darby O'Gill and the Good People by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh (1903).djvu/155

Rh tongue, and by the time they raiched Tom Grogan’s public-house, which was straight two miles across from Barney Casey’s, the liquor set him singing like a nightingale.

Maureen and Darby slipped into Grogan’s for a bit of warmth and a mouthful to ate, laving the Master of Sleive-na-mon well wrapped up at the bottom of the cart—his head on a sack of oats and his feet against the cart-side—and as I said, him singing.

He had the finest, liftenest way for a ballad you ever heard! At the end of every verse he eleywated the last word and hildt it high, and put a lonesome wobble into his woice that would make you cry.

Peggy Collins, the tall, thieving ould beggar-woman who used to wear the dirty red cloak, an’ looked like a sojer in it, was sleeping inside the hedge as the cart came along; but when it stopped she peeped out to see who had the good song with him.

When she saw it was an infant not much longer than your two hands, “God presarve us and save us!” she gasped, and began to say her prayers. The King went on singing, clear and doleful and beautiful, the ballad of Donnelly and Cooper. Rh