Page:Darby O'Gill and the Good People by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh (1903).djvu/169

Rh ing the King’s head to her bosom—“oh, Patsy, me jewel, have they kilt you entirely?”

At that the King spoke up in a clear, cowld woice. Misdoubting her ears, Mrs. Mulligan stopped and bent her head, listening to her baby.

“Don’t worry for me, ma’am, thank you kindly,” says the baby, polite and sthrong. “Don’t throuble yourself about the general state of my robustness,” it says, “it’s thraymendous,” says the child—“in fact, I never was betther.”

As cautiously as if she was unwrapping a rowl of butther Mrs. Mulligan began to unwind the cloth from about the King’s head.

When this was done she flung up her face an’ yelled, “Ow! ow! ow!” and then came right up from the ground the second hard joult the King got that day.

As he lay on his back fastening his strange clothes and thinking what he would do next, he could hear Mrs. Mulligan going down the road. She was making a noise something like a steam whustle.

“Be-gorr,” says the King, sitting up and feeling of his back, “to-day, with the women, I’m playing the divil entirely!” Rh