The Little Good People

They dropped on their knees before them for an instant, and then rose and spoke to them. In a moment the King clapped his hands, with a sign for the pipers and the fiddlers to stop playing. The instant that they stopped, everybody in the hall was still.

The King stood up and said to them: "Will ye be still now and listen, all of ye, to the news that's come to me this minute, and then will ye help me to think what we're to do about it at all? Here's these two that's just come in, and they're just afther tellin' me that they've been at the O'Briens' house this evenin', and there they heard talk betune the O'Briens and the Sullivans, and it's all decided that both the O'Briens and the Sullivans is goin' to the States. And it's sorry I'll be to see the O'Briens lavin' the counthry. I don't care so much for the Sullivans."

"It was the O'Briens," said the Queen, "that always put the bit and sup outside the door for us, and what we'll be doin' widout the milk and the pertaties and the fresh wather, I dunno."

"Ye needn't be throubled about that," the King answered; "haven't we always enough to eat and drink of our own, whatever happens?"

"Thrue for you," said the Queen, "we have our own food and drink, but it's not the same that we get from human people. Ye know that same yourself, and it's you as much as any that'll be missin' them things when the O'Briens is gone."

"That's the thrue word too," said the King; "it'll be the bad day for us all out, when they go. What for are they lavin' the counthry at all?"

"If ye plase, Your Majesty," said one of the fairies who had brought the news, "we heard all that too. It's the hard times that's in it. It's that makes them all want to go, and then, more than that, it's the bother the Sullivans are put to all the time, wid the cow givin' no milk and the pig not gettin' fat, and all that, and they're bound that they'll go away and stand it no longer."

"Is that it?" said the King. "It's that divil Naggeneen that's in it. I told him he could bother them a little if he liked, but not to bother them too much, and now he's drivin' them and their neighbors out of the counthry, and we all have to suffer for it.