Page:Darby O'Gill and the Good People by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh (1903).djvu/262

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THE BANSHEE’S COMB

Darby laid down the lines an’ hilt out a handful of the little medicines.

“There’s nothin’ the matther with me, so why should I ate thim?” cried Bill.

“They’re the best thing in the worruld for that,” says Darby, forcing them into Bill’s mouth. “You don’t know whin you’ll nade thim,” he says, shoutin’. “It’s betther meet sickness half-way,” says he, “than to wait till it finds you.”

And thin, whilst Bill, with an open hand aginst his ear, was chawin’ the pills an’ lookin’ up plaintiff into Darby’s face, the knowledgeable man wint on in a blandishin’ way to pint out the sitiwation.

“You see, ’tis this away, Wullum,” he says. “It’s only too daylighted I’d be to take you home with me. Indade, Bridget herself has wondherful admiraytion for you in an ord’nary way,” says he. “She believes you’re a raymarkable man intirely,” he says, dayplomatic, “only she thinks you’re not clane,” says he.

The tinker must have misundherstood altogether, for he bawled, in rayply, “Wisha good luck to her,” he says, “an’ ain’t I glad to have so foine opinion from so foine a woman,” says he. “But sure, all the women notice how tidy I am, an’ that’s why they like

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