“Oh, thin, ain’t I glad an’ happy to hear you say thim worruds,” says his wife, puttin’ one foine arrum about his neck; “you’ve taken a load off my heart that’s been weighing heavy on it all night, for I thought maybe you’d be afeard.”
“Afeard of what?” axed Darby, liftin’ his eyebrows. Malachi throtted bouldly in an’ jumped up on the stool.
“You know Father Cassidy says,” whuspered Bridget, “that a loving deed of the hands done for the disthressed is itself a prayer worth a week of common prayers.”
“I have nothin’ agin that sayin’,” says Darby, his head cocked, an’ he growin’ suspicious.
Bridget wiped her forehead with her apron. “Well, this afthernoon I was at McCarthy’s house,” she wint on, soothering his hair with one hand, “an’, oh, but the poor child was disthressed! Her cheeks were flaming with the faver. An’, Darby, the thirst, the awful thirst! I looked about for a pinch of tay—there’s nothing so coolin’ for one in the faver as a cup of wake tay—an’ the sorra scrap of it was in the house, so I tould Cormac that tonight, as soon as the childher were in bed, I’d send you over with a pinch.”
Every one of Darby’s four bones stiffened an’ a mortial chill sthruck into his heart.
“Listen, darlint,” she says, “the storm’s dying down, so while you’re putting on your greatcoat I’ll wrap up the bit of tay.” He shook her hand from his chowldhers.
“Woman,” he says, with bitther politeness, “I think you said that we had a great chanst to get credit for our two sowls. That’s what I think you raymarked and stibulated,” says he.
“Arrah, shouldn’t a woman have great praise an’ credit who’ll send her husband out on such a night as this,” his wife says. “The worse the con‑ditions, the more credit she’ll get. If a ghost were to jump at ye as you go past the churchyard, oughtn’t I be the happy woman entirely?” says Bridget.
There was a kind of a tinkle in her woice, such as comes when Bridget is telling jokes, so Darby, with a sudden hope in his mind, turned quick to look at her. But there she stood grim, unfeeling, an’ daytermined as a pinted gun.
“Oh, ho! is that the way it is?” he says. “Well, here’s luck an’ good fortune to the ghost or skellington that lays his hand on me this blessed night!” He stuck his two hands deep in his pockets and whirled one leg across the other—the most aggrawating thing a man can do. But Bridget was not the laste discouraged; she only made up her mind to come at him on his soft side, so she spoke up an’ said:
“Suppose I was dying of the faver, Darby O’Gill, an’ Cormac rayfused to bring over a pinch of tay to me. What, then, would ye think of the stonecutter?”
Malachi, the cat, stopped licking his paws, an’ trun a sharp, inquiring eye at his master.
“Bridget,” says the knowledgeable man, giving his hand an argifying wave. “We have two separate ways of being good. Your way is to scurry round an’ do good acts. My way is to keep from doing bad ones. An’ who knows,” he says, with a pious sigh, “which way is the betther one. It isn’t for us to judge,” says he, shakin’ his head solemn at the fire.
Bridget walked out in front of him an’ fowlded her arms tight.
“So you won’t go,” she says, sharp an’ suddin’.
“The divil a foot!” says he, beginnin’ to whustle.
You’d think, now, Bridget was bate, but she still hildt her trump card, an’ until that was played an’ lost the lad wasn’t safe. “All right, me brave hayro,” says she; “do you sit there be the fire; I’ll go meself,” she says. With that she bounced into the childher’s room an’ began to get ready her cloak an’ hood.
For a minute Darby sat pokin’ the fire, muttherin’ to himself an’ feeling very discommodious. Thin, just to show he wasn’t the laste bit onaisy, the lad cleared his throat, and waggin’ his head at the fire, began to sing:
“Yarra! as I walked out one mor‑r‑nin’ all in the month of June
The primrosies and daisies o’ cowslips were in bloom,
I spied a purty fair maid a-sthrollin’ on the lea,
An’ Rory Bory Alice, nor any other ould ancient haythan goddess
was not half so fair as she.
Says I, ‘Me purty fair maid, I’ll take you for me bride.
An’ if you’ll pay no at-tin-tion—’ ”
Glancing up sudden, he saw Malachi’s eye on him, and if ever the faytures of a cat spoke silent but plain langwidge Malachi’s face talked that minute to its master, and this is what it said:
“Well, of all the cowardly, creaking bostheens I ever see in all me born days you are the worst, Darby O’Gill. You’ve not only guve impidence to your wife—an’ she’s worth four of you—but you’ve gone back on the friends you purtended to—”
Malachi’s faytures got no further in their insultin’ raymarks, for at that Darby swooped up a big sod of turf an’ let it fly at the owdacious baste.
Now it is well known that be a spontaneous trow like that no one ever yet hit a sinsible cat, but always an’ ever in that unlucky endayvour he strikes a damaginger blow where it’s not intinded. So it was this time.
Bridget, wearing her red cloak an’ hood, was just coming through the door, an’ that misfortunate sod of turf caught her fair an’ square, right below the chist, an’ she staggered back agin the wall.
Darby’s consthernaytion an’ complycation an’ turpitaytion were beyant imaginaytion.
Bridget laned there gasping. If she felt as bad as she looked, four Dublint surgunts with their saws an’ knives couldn’t have done her a ha-porth of good. Howsumever, for all that, the sly woman had seen Malachi dodge an’ go gallopin’ away, but she purtendid to think ’twas at herself the turf
