Page:Darby O'Gill and the Good People by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh (1903).djvu/25

Rh on the bagpipes. The little King, with a goold crown on his head, wearing a beautiful green velvet coat and red knee-breeches, sat with his legs crossed, beating time with his foot to the music.

There were many from Darby’s own parish; and what was his surprise to see there Maureen McGibney, his own wife’s sister, whom he had supposed resting dacintly in her own grave in holy ground these three years. She had flowers in her brown hair, a fine colour in her cheeks, a gown of white silk and goold, and her green mantle raiched to the heels of her purty red slippers.

There she was gliding back an’ forth, ferninst a little gray-whuskered, round-stomached fairy man, as though there was never a care nor a sorrow in the worruld.

As I tould you before, I tell you again, Darby was the finest reel-dancer in all Ireland; and he came from a family of dancers, though I say it who shouldn’t, as he was my mother’s own cousin. Three things in the worruld banish sorrow—love and whisky and music. So, when the surprise of it all melted a little, Darby’s feet led him in to the thick of the throng, right under the throne of the King, where he flung care to the Rh