must guess at, for I’m not bitther-tongued enough to repayt it.
Seeing that not a hair changed for all his work, Barney wrapped Maureen’s shawl about the King and started for home, saying: “Hould your whist! It’s a child I must have to be baptised this day. It’ll be hard to manage, but I have a plan! You came as a child, and you’ll be thrated as such—and look, if you don’t quit kicking me in the stomach, I’ll strangle you!”
As you know, to say pious words to one of the Good People is worse than cutting him with a knife, to show him pious pictures is like burning him, but to baptise a fairy is the most turrible punishment in the whole worruld.
As they went along, the King argyed, besought and threatened, but he talked to stone.
At last, although he had but the strength of a six-year-old child, the Captain of the Good People showed what high spirit was in him.
“Set me down, you thief,” he says. “I challenge you! If you have a dhrop of your mother’s blood in you, set me ferninst you with sticks in our hands, so we can fight it out like men!”
