last Ayster Monday night for the same rayson?” axed the King, very cool.
At this the laughing broke out agin, uproarious, some of the little men houlding their sides and tears rowling down their cheeks; two lads begun dancing together before the chiny dishes upon the dhresser. But at the height of the merriment there was a cry and a splash, for Phadrig Oge had fallen into the churn.
Before anyone could help him Phadrig had climbed bravely up the churn-dash, hand over hand like a sailor man, and clambered out all white and dripping. “Don’t mind me,” he says; “go on wid the discoorse!” he cried, shaking himself. The Ruler of the Good People looked vexed.
“I marvel at yez, an’ I am ashamed of yez!” he says. “If I’m not able alone for this dayludhered man, yer shoutin’ and your gallivantin’ll do me no good. Besides, fair play’s a jewel, even two agin one ain’t fair,” says the King. “If I hear another word from one of yez, back to Sleive-na-mon he’ll go, an’ lay there on the broad of his back, with his heels in the air, for a year and tin days!
“You were about to obsarve, Father Cassidy,”
