Page:Darby O'Gill and the Good People by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh (1903).djvu/123

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HOW THE FAIRIES CAME TO IRELAND

ness, more nade for petaties than for physic. Now, if you send that same bit of bacon⸺”

“Oh, ho!” says the King, with a dhry cough, “the Healeys have no sowls to save, the same as parish priests have.”

“I’m a poor, wake, miserable sinner,” says the priest, hanging his head; “I fall at the first temp- tation. Don’t send it,” says he.

“Since you forbid me, I’ll send it,” says the King, chucklin’. “I’ll not be ruled by you. To-morrow the Healeys’ll have five tinder-hearted heads of cab- bage, makin’ love in a pot to the finest bit of bacon in Tipperary—that is, unless you do your juty an’ ride back to warn them. Raymember their poor sowls,” says he, “an’ don’t forget your own,” he says.

The priest sat unaisy in the saddle. “I’ll put all the raysponsibility on Terror,” he says. “The baste has no sowl to lose. I’ll just drop the reins on his neck; if he turns and goes back to Healey’s I’ll warn them; if he goes home let it be on his own conscience.”

He dhropped the reins, and the dishonest baste started for home imagetly.

But afther a few steps Father Cassidy dhrew up

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