Page:Darby O'Gill and the Good People by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh (1903).djvu/264

Rh comfortable till they were almost at McHale’s bridge. Then the tinker spoke up.

“Did ye hear the black threats Sheelah Maguire is makin’ agin you?” he says.

“No,” says Darby; “what in the worruld ails her?” says he.

“Bless the one of me knows,” says the tinker, “nor anybody else for that matther. Only that last Halloween night Sheelah Maguire was bate black an’ blue from head to foot, an’ she lays the raysponsibility on you, Darby,” he says.

The knowledgeable man had his mouth open for a question whin who should go runnin’ acrost the road in front of them but Neddy McHale himself, an’ his arrum full of sticks. “Go back! go back!” cries Neddy, wavin’ an arrum wild. “The bridge’s butther-worruks are washed out be the flood an’ McDonald’s bridge is down, too, so yez must go around be the mill,” says Neddy.

Now here was bitther news for ye! ’Twas two miles out of the way to go be Chartres’ mill, an’ do the best possible they’d be passing that ha’nted place in the pitch dark.

“Faith, an’ I’ve had worse luck than in pickin’ Rh