“Arrah! You ought to be the happy man, King,” Darby says, sipping his noggin of punch, “with no silly woman to ordher you or to cross you or to belittle you. Look at meself. Afther all the rayspect I’ve climbed into from being with the fairies, and afther all the knowledge I’ve got from them, there’s one person in this parish who has no more riverence for me now than she had the first day she met me—sometimes not so much, I’m thinking,” he says, hurt-like.
“I’ve seen the workings of families during more than five thousand years,” says the little King, “so you needn’t tell me who that one person is, me poor man—’tis your own wife, Bridget.”
“Thrue for you! Whin it’s the proud woman she ought to be this day to have the likes of me for a husband,” says Darby. “Ah, then, you ought to be the happy man, whatever wind blows,” he sighed again; “when you see a fat pig you like, you take it without so much as saying by your lave; if you come upon a fine cow or a good horse, in a twinkling you have it in Sleive-na-mon. A girl has a good song with her, a boy has a nimble foot for a jig, or an ould woman a smooth tongue for a tale, and, whisk! they’re gone into the heart of the mountain to sing or dance for you, or to beguile you with ould tales until the Day of Judgment.”
The King shook his head slowly, and drew a long face.
“Maybe we ought to be happy,” says he. “ ’Tis thrue there’s no sickness in Sleive-na-mon, nor worry for tomorrow, nor fret for one’s childher, nor parting from friends, or things like that, but throuble is like the dhrifting snow outside, Darby; it falls on the cottage and it covers the castle with the same touch, and once in a while it sifts into Sleive-na-mon.”
“In the name of goodness!” cries Darby, surprised, “is there anything in the whole world you can’t have for the wishing it?”
The King took off his goold crown and began polishing it with his sleeve to hide his narvousness. “I’ll tell you a saycret,” he whuspered, bending over toward Darby, and speaking slow. “In Sleive-na-mon our hearts are just breaking for something we can’t get; but that’s one thing we’d give the worruld for.”
“Oh, King, what in the livin’ worruld can it be?” cried Maureen.
“I’d give the teeth out of me head if I could only own a goat,” says the King, looking as though he were going to cry.
“Man alive!” says Darby, dhropping the poker, “the counthry-side is full of goats, and all you have to do is to take your pick and help yourself. You’re making game of us, King.”
The King shook his head. “The Good People have been thrying for years to capture one,” says he. “I’ve been bunted into ditches by the villains; I’ve been trun over hedges by them; I had to leap on the back of Anthony Sullivan’s goat, and with two hundred of me subjects in full cry behind, ride him all night long, houlding by his horns to kape him from getting at me and disthroying me entirely. The jumps he took with me that night were thraymendous. It was from the cowshed to the sthraw-stack, from the sthraw-stack to the housetop, and from there down to the ground agin, and then hooraying an’ hoorooing, a race up the mountainside. But,” says the King, kind o’ sniffling an’ turning to the fire, “we love the ground he walks upon,” says he.
“Tare an’ ouns!” says Darby, “why don’t you put your spell on one of them?”
“You don’t know them,” says the King. “We can’t put the black spell on thim—they’re not Christian bastes, like pigs or cows. Whin it comes to animals, we can only put our come ’ither on cattle and horses, and such as are Christian animals, ye know. In his mind and in his heart a goat is a pagen. He wouldn’t ask any betther divarsion than for me to thry and lay me hands on him,” says the King, wiping his eyes.
“But,” says he agin, standing up on the stool and houlding his pipe over his head, “Anthony Sullivan’s goat is the gallusest baste that roams the fields! There’s more fun in him, and no more fear in him, than in a yallow lion. He’d do anything for sport; he’d bunt the King of Russia, he’d ba-a at a parish priest, out of pure, rollicking divilment,” says the King. “If the Good People had a friend, a rale friend,” says he, looking hard at Darby, “that wouldn’t be afeard to go into our home within the mountain once more, just once, and bring with him that goat—”
“Say no more,” says Darby, hoarsely, and turning white with fear—“say no more, Brian Connors! Not all the goold in Sleive-na-mon would tempt me there agin! It’s make a presner of me forever you would. I know your thricks.”
The look of scorn the little man flung at Darby would have withered the threes.
“I might have known it,” he says, sitting down disgusted. “I was a fool for hoping you would,” says he. “There’s no more spirit in ye nor sinse of gratichude than in a hin. Wait till!—” and he shook his fist.
“Don’t blame the lad,” cried Maureen, patting the King’s head, sootheringly; “sure, why should the like of a wondherful man, such as you, who has lived five thousand years, and knows everything, compare your wit or your spirit or your sinse with the likes of us poor crachures that only stay here a few hours and thin are gone forever?” This she cried, craftily, flatthering the ould man. “Be aisy on him, King, acushla!” says she, coaxing.
Well, the little man, being soothered, sat down agin. “Maybe I was too hard,” he says, “but to tell the truth, the life is just bothered
