Page:Darby O'Gill and the Good People by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh (1903).djvu/238

Rh ing a forefinger in the palm of the other hand. “I have fifty-three pounds that Father Cassidy’s keeping for me. Fifty-three pounds,” he says agin. “An’ I have this good bit of a farm that me father was born on, an’ his father was born on, too, and the grandfather of him. An’ I have the grass of seven cows. You know that. Well, I’ll give it all to you, all, every stiver of it, if you’ll only go outside an’ dhrive away that cursed singer.” He trew his head to one side an’ looked anxious up at Darby.

The knowledgeable man racked his brains for something to speak, but all he could say was, “I’ve brought you a bit of tay from the wife, Cormac.”

McCarthy took the tay with unfeeling hands, an’ wint on talking in the same dull way. Only this time there came a hard lump in his throat now and then that he stopped to swally.

“The three cows I have go, of course, with the farm,” says he. “So does the pony an’ the five pigs. I have a good plough an’ a foine harrow; but you must lave my stone-cutting tools, so little Eileen an’ I can earn our way wherever we go, an’ it’s little the crachure ates the best of times.”

The man’s eyes were dhry an’ blazin’; no doubt his Rh