Then he stood outside, holding the door shut against the three women, thrying to think of a plan, and listening to more blisthering talk than he ever heard on any day before that day, for the three women talked at the same time, aich striving to be more disagreeable than the other. What dhrove him crazy was that his own wife, Judy, was the worst. They threatened him, they wheedled, and they stormed. The priest might ride up at any minute. The sweat rained from Barney’s forehead.
Once in desperaytion he opened the door to let the women pass, but shut it quick agin whin he saw the King standin’ up on the bed and him changing his own clothes for those of little Patsy Mulligan.
Well, the women coaxed till Mrs. Mulligan lost all patience and went and sat sullen on the bench. At that Mrs. Brophy suddenly caught Barney around the waist, and whirling him aside, she and Judy rushed in. Barney, with the fierceness of a tiger, swung shut the door to keep Mrs. Mulligan at bay.
The other women inside were hopping with joy. Dhressed in Maureen’s shawl, but divil a thing else, lay on the outside edge of the bed poor little Patsy Mulligan. The King, almost smothered, dhressed in Patsy’s clothes, was scrooged in to the wall with a cloth about his head wrapped round and round.
“Oh, the little jewel,” says Mrs. Brophy, picking up little Patsy Mulligan, and setting herself on the bed; “he’s the dead cut of his father.”
In that quare way women have Judy already had half a feeling that the child by some kind of magic was her own. So she spoke up sharp and said that the child was the image of her brother Mike.
While they were disputing, Mrs. Brophy turned her head and saw the legs of the King below the edge of little Patsy’s dhress—the dhress that he’d stole an’ put on.
“For the love of God, Mrs. Casey!” says she, laying her hand on Judy’s chowlder, “did you ever before see feet on a child of two weeks old like them on Patsy Mulligan?”
Well, at this they laughed and titthered and doubled backward and forward on the bed, sniggering at the King and saying funny things about him, till, mad with the shame of the women looking at his bare knees, and stung be the provoking things they said, he did a very foolish thing;—he took a pin from his clothes and gave Mrs. Brophy so cruel a prod that, big as she was, and proud as she was, it lifted her in three leaps across the floor. “Whoop! whoop!” she says, as she was going. Now, though heavy and haughty, Mrs. Brophy was purty nimble on her feet, for, red and indignant, she whirled in a twinkling. “Judy Casey,” says she, glowering and squaring off, “if that’s your ideeah of a good, funny joke, I’ll taiche you a betther!” she says.
When Barney, outside listening with his heart in his mouth, heard the angry woices within, a great wakeness came into his chist, for he thought everything was over. Mrs. Mulligan pushed past him—he lost the power to prevent her—and he follyed her into the house with quaking knees. There was the uproar!
While the three was persuading the furious Mrs. Brophy that it must have been a pin in the bedclothes, Ted Murphy, breathless, flung open the door.
“Father Scanlan wants to know,” he cried, “what ails the baby that you can’t bring it to church,” he says.
All turned questioning eyes to Barney, till his mind flutthered like a wounded parthridge. Only two disayses could the unfortunate man on the suddint raymember.
“It’s half maysles and a thrifle of scarlet faver,” he says. He couldn’t aisily have said anything worse. Seeing a turrible look on Mrs. Mulligan’s face, he says agin, “But I don’t think it’s ketching, ma’am.”
The fright was on. With a great cry, Mrs. Brophy dived for and picked up little Cornaylius and rushed with him out of the door and down the road; Mrs. Mulligan, thinking she had little Patsy, bekase of the clothes, snatched up the King—his head still rowled in the cloth—and darted up the road. She was clucking curses like an angry hen as she went, and hugging the King and coddling him, and crying over him and saying foolish baby langwidge, till he was so disgusted that he daytermined to give her a shock.
“Oh, me poor little darling!” she sobbed, pressing the King’s head to her bosom—“oh, Patsy, me jewel, have they kilt you entirely?”
At that the King spoke up in a clear, cowld woice.
Misdoubting her ears, Mrs. Mulligan stopped and bent her head, listening to her baby.
“Don’t worry for me, ma’am, thank you kindly,” says the baby, polite and sthrong. “Don’t throuble yourself about the general state of my robustness,” it says, “it’s thraymendous,” says the child—“in fact, I never was betther.”
As cautiously as if she was unwrapping a rowl of butther Mrs. Mulligan began to unwind the cloth from about the King’s head.
When this was done she flung up her face an’ yelled, “Ow! ow! ow!” and then came right up from the ground the second hard joult the King got that day.
As he lay on his back fastening his strange clothes and thinking what he would do next, he could hear Mrs. Mulligan going down the road. She was making a noise something like a steam whustle.
“Be-gorr,” says the King, sitting up and feeling of his back, “today, with the women, I’m playing the divil entirely!”
III
The Luck of the Mulligans
The wee King of the Fairies sat in the dust of the road where Ann Mulligan had dhropped him. There were dents in his goold crown, and the baby’s dhress he still wore was soiled and tore.
Ow! Ow! Ow! What a terrible joult agin the ground Ann Mulligan gave him when she took the covering from his
