Page:Darby O'Gill and the Good People by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh (1903).djvu/200

Rh couldn’t for the life of her tell; but if the errant was left undone she would be the laughin’-stock of every woman in the parish.

But worst of all, an’ what cut her heart the sorest, was that she had turned an act of neighbourly kindness into a wainglorious boast; an’ that, she doubted not, was a mortal sin.

She had promised Cormac in the afthernoon that as soon as she got home she would send Darby over with some tay for poor little Eileen, an’ now a big storm was gathering, an’ before she could have supper ready, thry as hard as she could, black night might be upon them.

“To bring aise to the dying is the comfortingist privilege a man or woman can have, an’ I’ve thraded it for a miserable settin’ of eggs,” she says. “Amn’t I the unfortunit crachure,” she thought, “to have let me pride rune me this away. What’ll I do at all at all?” she cried. “Bad luck to the thought that took me out of me way to Elizabeth Egan’s house!”

Then she med a wish that she might be able to get home in time to send Darby on his errant before the night came on. “If they laugh at me, that’ll be my punishment, an’ maybe it’ll clane my sin,” says she. Rh