Page:Darby O'Gill and the Good People by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh (1903).djvu/120

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HOW THE FAIRIES CAME TO IRELAND

“ ‘At laste,’ says I, ‘make them Jews.’

“ ‘If I made them Jews,’ he says, slowly screwing up one eye to think, ’how could you keep them poor? No, no!’ he said, shutting up the book, ’go your ways; you have enough.’

“I clapped me hands, and all the Little People stood up and bent over the edge, their fingers pointed like swimmers going to dive. ‘One, two, three,’ I shouted, and with that we took the leap.

“We were two years and tunty-six days falling before we raiched the world. On the morning of the next day we began our sarch for a place to live. We thravelled from north to south and from ayst to west. Some grew tired and dhropped off in Spain, some in France, and others agin in different parts of the world. But the most of us thravelled ever and ever till we came to a lovely island that glimmered and laughed and sparkled in the middle of the say.

“ ‘We’ll stop here,’ I says; ‘we needn’t sarch farther, and we needn’t go back to Italy or Swizzerland, for of all places on the earth this island is the nearest like heaven; and in it the County Clare and the County Tipperary are the purtiest spots of all.’

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