Page:Darby O'Gill and the Good People by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh (1903).djvu/198

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
THE BANSHEE’S COMB

The hurt pride in Bridget rose at that an’ forced from her angry lips a foolish promise.

“Huh! we hear ducks talkin’,” she says, coolly rowling up Darby’s stocking, an’ sticking the needle in the ball of yarn. “This afthernoon I was at Cormac McCarthy’s,” she says, “an’ there wasn’t a bit of tay in the house for poor Eileen, so I promised Cormac I’d send him up a handful. Now, be the same token, I promise you my Darby will make no bones of going on that errant this night.”

“Ho! ho! ho!” laughed Margit. “If he has the courage to do it bid him sthop in to me on his way back, an’ I’ll send to you a fine settin’ of eggs from my black Spanish hin.”

What sharp worrud Misthress O’Gill would have flung back in answer no one knows, bekase whin once purvoked she has few ayquils for sarcastic langwidge, but just then Elizabeth Ann put in Bridget’s hand a steaming cup of good, sthrong tay. Now, whusky, ale, an’ porther are all good enough in their places, yer honour—I’ve nothing to intimidate aginst them—but for a comforting, soothering, edayfing buverage give me a cup of foine black tay. So this day the cups were filled only the second time, when the

[ 184 ]