Page:Darby O'Gill and the Good People by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh (1903).djvu/199

Rh subject of husbands was complately dhropped, an’ the conwersation wandhered to the misdajmeanours of Anthony Sullivan’s goat.

All this time the women had been so busy with their talkin’ an’ argyfyin’ that the creeping darkness of a coming storm had stolen unnoticed into the room, making the fire glow brighter and redder on the hearth. A faint flare of lightning, follyed be a low grumble of thunder, brought the women to their feet.

“Marcy on us!” says Caycelia Crow, glad of an excuse to be gone, “do you hear that? We’ll all be dhrownded before we raich home,” says she.

In a minute the wisitors, afther dhraining their cups, were out in the road, aich hurryin’ on her separate way, an’ tying her bonnet-sthrings as she wint.

’Twas a heavy an’ a guilty heart that Bridget carried home with her through the gathering storm. Although Darby was a nuntimate friend of the fairies, yet, as Margit Doyle said, he had such a black dhread of all other kinds of ghosts that to get him out on this threatening Halloween night, to walk past the churchyard, as he must do on his way to Cormac McCarthy’s cottage, was a job ayquil to liftin’ the Shannon bridge. How she was to manage it she Rh