“How,” says Bridget, quick and scornful—“How could your aunt’s sisters be your four fathers?”
What Darby was going to say to her he don’t just raymember, for at that instant, from the right hand side of the mountain, came a cracking of whips, a rattling of wheels, an’ the rush of horses, and, lo and behold! a great dark coach with flashing lamps, and drawn by four coal-black horses, dashed up the hill and stopped beside them. Two shadowy men were on the driver’s box.
“Is this Lord Darby O’Gill?” axed one of them in a deep, muffled voice. Before Darby could reply, Bridget took the words out of his mouth.
“It is,” she cried, in a kind of a half cheer, “an’ Lady O’Gill an’ the childher.”
“Then hurry up,” says the coachman, “your supper’s gettin’ cowld.”
Without waiting for anyone, Bridget flung open the carriage-door, an’ pushin’ Darby aside, jumped in among the cushins. Darby, his heart sizzlin’ with vexation at her audaciousness, lifted in one after another the childher, and then got in himself.
He couldn’t undherstand at all the change in his wife, for she had always been the odherliest, modestist woman in the parish.
Well, he’d no sooner shut the door than crack went the whip, the horses gave a spring, the carriage jumped, and down the hill they went. For fastness there was never another carriage-ride like that before nor since. Darby hildt tight with both hands to the window, his face pressed against the glass. He couldn’t tell whether the horses were only flying, or whether the coach was falling down the hill into the walley. By the hollow feeling in his stomach he thought they were falling. He was striving to think of some prayers when there came a terrible joult, which sint his two heels against the roof, an’ his head betwixt the cushions. As he righted himself the wheels began to grate on a graveled road, an’ plainly they were dashing up the side of the second mountain.
Even so, they couldn’t have gone far whin the carriage dhrew up in a flurry, an’ he saw through the gloom a high iron gate being slowly opened.
“Pass on,” said a woice from somewhere in the shadows, “their supper’s getting cowld.”
As they flew undher the great archway Darby had a glimpse of the thing which had opened the gate, and had said their supper was getting cowld. It was standing on its hind legs—in the darkness he couldn’t be quite sure as to its shape, but it was ayther a bear or a loin.
His mind was in a pondher about this when, with a swirl an’ a bump, the carriage stopped another time; an’ now it stood before a broad flight of stone steps which led up to the main door of the castle. Darby, half afraid, peering out through the darkness, saw a square of light high above him which came from the open hall door. Three sarvents in livery stood waiting on the thrashol.
“Make haste, make haste,” says one in a doleful voice, “their supper’s gettin’ cowld.”
Hearing these words, Bridget imagetly bounced out an’ was halfway up the steps before Darby could ketch her an’ hould her till the childher came on.
“I never in all my life saw her so owdacious,” he says, half cryin’ and linkin’ her arm to keep her back, an’ thin, with the childher follying, two by two, according to size, the whole family payraded up the steps till Darby, with a gasp of deloight, stopped on the thrashol of a splendid hall. From a high ceiling hung great flags from every nation an’ domination, which swung an’ swayed in the dazzlin’ light.
Two lines of men and maid servants, dhressed in silks an’ satins an’ brocades, stood facing aich other, bowing an’ smiling an’ wavin’ their hands in welcome. The two lines stretched down to the goold stairway at the far ind of the hall.
For half of one minute, Darby, every eye in his head as big as a tay-cup, stood hesitaytin’. Thin he said, “Why should it flutther me? Arrah, ain’t it all mine? Aren’t all these people in me pay? I’ll engage it’s a pritty penny all this grandeur is costing me to keep up this minute.” He trew out his chest. “Come on Bridget!” he says, “let’s go into the home of my ansisthers.”
Howandever, scarcely had he stepped into the beautiful place, whin two pipers with their pipes, two fiddlers with their fiddles, two flute-players with their flutes, an’ they dhressed in scarlet an’ goold, stepped out in front of him, and thus to maylodious music the family proudly marched down the hall, climbed up the goolden stairway at its ind, an’ thin turned to enter the biggest room Darby had ever seen.
Something in his sowl whuspered that this was the picture gallery.
“Be the powers of Pewther,” says the knowledgeable man to himself, “I wouldn’t be in Bridget’s place this minute for a hatful of money. Wait, oh just wait, till she has to compare her own relations with my own foine people! I know how she’ll feel, but I wondher what she’ll say,” he says.
The thought that all the unjust things, all the unraysonable things Bridget had said about his kith an’ kin were just going to be disproved and turned against herself made him proud an’ almost happy.
But wirrasthrue! He should have raymembered his own adwise not to make nor moil nor meddle with the fairies, for here he was to get the first hard welt from the little Leprechaun.
It was the picture-gallery sure enough, but how terribly different everything was from what the poor lad expected. There on the left wall, grand an’ noble, shone the pictures of Bridget’s people. Of all the well-dressed, handsome, proud-appearing persons in the whole worruld the O’Hagans an’ the O’Shaughnessys would compare with the best. This was a hard enough crack, though a crushinger knock was to
