Page:Darby O'Gill and the Good People by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh (1903).djvu/166

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THE ADVENTURES OF KING BRIAN CONNORS

rushed in. Barney, with the fierceness of a tiger, swung shut the door to keep Mrs. Mulligan at bay.

The other women inside were hopping with joy. Dhressed in Maureen’s shawl, but divil a thing else, lay on the outside edge of the bed poor little Patsy Mulligan. The King, almost smothered, dhressed in Patsy’s clothes, was scrooged in to the wall with a cloth about his head wrapped round and round.

“Oh, the little jewel,” says Mrs. Brophy, picking up little Patsy Mulligan, and setting herself on the bed; “he’s the dead cut of his father.”

In that quare way women have Judy already had half a feeling that the child by some kind of magic was her own. So she spoke up sharp and said that the child was the image of her brother Mike.

While they were disputing, Mrs. Brophy turned her head and saw the legs of the King below the edge of little Patsy’s dhress—the dhress that he’d stole an’ put on.

“For the love of God, Mrs. Casey!” says she, laying her hand on Judy’s chowlder, “did you ever before see feet on a child of two weeks old like them on Patsy Mulligan?”

Well, at this they laughed and titthered and

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