Page:Darby O'Gill and the Good People by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh (1903).djvu/229

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THE BANSHEE’S COMB

middle of the road an’ stood there wiry an’ attentive, listening to the names flung at him from where his late comerade sat on the lowest step of the stile nursin’ the hurted foot.

’Twas an excited owl in the belfry that this time spoke up an’ shouted to his brother down in the black-thorn:

“Come up, come up quick!” it says. “Darby O’Gill is just afther calling Solomon Kilcannon a malayfactor.”

Darby rose at last, an’ as he climbed over the stile he turned to shake his fist toward the middle of the road.

“Bad luck to ye for a thick-headed, on-grateful informer!” he says; “you go your way an’ I’ll go mine—we’re sundhers,” says he. So sayin’, the crippled man wint limpin’ an’ grumplin’ down the boreen, through the meadow, whilst his desarted friend sint rayproachful brays afther him that would go to your heart.

The throbbin’ of our hayro’s toe banished all pity for the baste, an’ even all thoughts of the banshee, till a long, gurgling, swooping sound in front toult him that his fears about the rise in McDonald’s

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