Page:Darby O'Gill and the Good People by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh (1903).djvu/210

Rh ing my pipe, but at the same time prayers’ll be whirlin’ inside of me like a wind-mill,” says he.

“Oh, thin, ain’t I glad an’ happy to hear you say thim worruds,” says his wife, puttin’ one foine arrum about his neck; “you’ve taken a load off my heart that’s been weighing heavy on it all night, for I thought maybe you’d be afeard.”

“Afeard of what?” axed Darby, liftin’ his eyebrows. Malachi throtted bouldly in an’ jumped up on the stool.

“You know Father Cassidy says,” whuspered Bridget, “that a loving deed of the hands done for the disthressed is itself a prayer worth a week of common prayers.”

“I have nothin’ agin that sayin’,” says Darby, his head cocked, an’ he growin’ suspicious.

Bridget wiped her forehead with her apron. “Well, this afthernoon I was at McCarthy’s house,” she wint on, soothering his hair with one hand, “an’, oh, but the poor child was disthressed! Her cheeks were flaming with the faver. An’, Darby, the thirst, the awful thirst! I looked about for a pinch of tay—there’s nothing so coolin’ for one in the faver as a cup of wake tay—an’ the sorra scrap of it was in the Rh