“No,” says the King, looking at him sideways.
“At laste not yit,” says Darby, looking sideways at the King.
“Not yit, nor will I fer a long time yitter, you covetous, ungrateful spalpeen!” snapped the fairy.
“Well,” said he, paying no more attention to Darby, “this young omadhaun is six feet high in his stockings, and as foine a looking lad as you’ll see in a day’s walk. Now what do you think he’s mourning and crooning for?”
“Faix, I dunno,” answered Darby. “Maybe it’s a horse or a dog or a cow, or maybe a pair of pigs.”
“You’ve not hit it,” said the Ruler of the Good People; “it’s a colleen. And him having a college education, too.”
“Troth, thin,” said Darby, with a knowledgeable wag of his head, “some of them larned students are as foolish in that way as ignorant people. I once met a tinker named Larry McManus, who knew the jography from cover to cover, and still he had been married three times.”
“Poor gossoon! Who is the omadhaun?” asked Maureen, not minding Darby.
“He’s no less,” said the King, “than Roger
