Page:Darby O'Gill and the Good People by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh (1903).djvu/99

Rh lin’s from ould Mrs. Frawley? She counted them at Mrs. McGee’s, an’ she felt them in her pocket at Mrs. Donovan’s; the crowd jostled her at the chapel door, an’ afther that they were gone,” he says.

Well, the fairies were splittin’ with laughter as he spoke.

“No one stole thim at all,” says Shaun Rhue, the tears of merriment rollin’ down his face. “The disraymemberin’ woman only aymagins she counted thim at Mrs. McGee’s an’ felt thim at Mrs. Donovan’s. She was only thinkin’ about the money at thim places, an’ that’s how she got the ideeh. She hid the shllin’s in the blue taypot with the broken spout, that stands in the left-han’ corner of the mayhogany dhresser, an’ thin forgot it entirely,” he says.

“Well, look at that, now,” says the priest, “an’ all the turmile there’s been about that same six shillin’s, an’ she afther hidin’ them in the taypot herself. Now isn’t there something I can do in rayturn for all your kindness?” he says.

“There’s one thing,” says King Brian Connors, lookin’ a good dale confuged. “If your Riverence could just as well—if it’d be no positive inconvaynience—we’d like mightilly for ye not to be singin’ Rh