Page:Darby O'Gill and the Good People by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh (1903).djvu/259

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THE BANSHEE’S COMB

money, Doctor McNamara, if you plaze?” he says. An’, whilst the ould chayter was turned to the writing, be the hokey if our hayro didn’t half fill his pockets with pills from the box. By manes of them, as he dhrove along home, he was able to do a power of good to the neighbour people he met with on the road.

Whin you once get in the habit of it there’s no pleasure in life which ayquils givin’ other people medicine.

Darby ginerously med ould Peggy O’Callaghan take six of the little round things. He gave a swally to half-witted Red Durgan, an’ a good mouthful to poor sick Eileen McCarthy (only she had to gulp them whole, poor thing, an’ couldn’t ate them as the others did—but maybe ’twas just as good). An’ he gave a fistful aich to Judy Rafferty an’ Dennis Hogan; an’ he stood handsome thrate to a sthranger, who, the minute he got the taste well intil his mouth, wanted to fight Darby. Howsumever, the two only called aich other hard names for a while, then Darby joggled along, doin’ good an’ growin’ lighter-hearted an’ merrier-minded at every sthop he med. ’Twas this way with him till, just in front of Mrs.

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