Page:Darby O'Gill and the Good People by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh (1903).djvu/32

Rh “Well, I’ll tell ye how it is,” replied my brave Darby. “Some of the neighbours might see me, and spread the report on me that I’m with the fairies and that’d disgrace Bridget and the childher,” he says.

The King knocked ashes from his pipe.

“You’re a wise man, besides being the hoight of good company,” says he, “and it’s sorry I am you didn’t take my word, for then we would have you always, at laste till the Day of Judgment, when—but that’s nayther here nor there! Howsomever, we’ll bother you about it no more.”

From that day they thrated him as one of their own.

It was nearly five months afther that Maureen plucked Darby by the coat and led him off to a lonely spot.

“I’ve got the word,” she says.

“Have you, faith! What is it?” says Darby, all of a thrimble.

Then she whispered a word so blasphaymous, so irrayligious that Darby blessed himself. When Maureen saw him making the sign, she fell down in a fit, the holy emblem hurt her so, poor child.

Three hours after this me bould Darby was sitting Rh