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قراءة كتاب The Irish Twins
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their legs tied together!
“The Saints preserve us,” whispered Eileen, “if those aren’t our own two geese! Do you see those black feathers in their wings?”
“He’s the thief of the world,” said Larry.
He forgot to be frightened because he was so angry, and he spoke right out loud! He stood up and shook his fist at the Tinker. His head showed over the top of the wall. Eileen jerked him down.
“Whist now, Larry darling,” she begged. “If the dog sees you once he’ll tear you to pieces.”
Larry dropped behind the wall again, and they watched the Tinker’s wife loosen the string about the legs of the geese, and tie them by a long cord to the bush, beside the little pig. Then all the Tinker people gathered around the pot and began to eat their supper.
The baby and the dog were on the ground playing together. The Twins could hear the shouts of the baby, and the barks of the dog.
It was quite dusk by this time, but the moon grew brighter and brighter in the sky, and the flames of the Tinkers’ fire glowed more and more red, as the night came on.
“Sure, it isn’t going to get real dark at all,” whispered Larry.
“Then we’d better be going now,” said Eileen, “for the Tinkers are eating their supper, and their backs are towards the road, and we’ll make hardly a taste of noise with our bare feet.”
They crept along behind the rocks, and over the wall. “Now,” whispered Larry, “slip along until we’re right beside them, and then run like the wind!”
The Twins took hold of hands. They could hear their hearts beat. They walked softly up the road.
The Tinkers were still laughing and talking; the baby and the dog kept on playing.
The Twins were almost by, when all of a sudden, the geese stood up. “Squawk, squawk,” they cried. “Squawk, squawk.”
“Whatever is the matter with you, now?” said the Tinker’s wife to the geese. “Can’t you be quiet?” The dog stopped romping with the baby, sniffed the air, and growled. “Lie down,” said the woman; “there’s a bone for your supper.” She threw the dog a bone. He sprang at it and began to gnaw it.
Larry and Eileen had crouched behind a rock the minute the geese began to squawk. “I believe they know us,” whispered Eileen.
They waited until everything was quiet again. Then Larry whispered, “Run now, and if you fall, never wait to rise but run till we get to Tom Daly’s house!”
Then they ran! The soft pat-pat of their bare feet on the dirt road was not heard by the Tinkers, and soon another turn in the road hid them from view, but, for all that, they ran and ran, ever so far, until some houses were in sight.
They could see the flicker of firelight in the windows of the nearest house. It was Tom Daly’s house. They could see Tom’s shadow as he sat at his loom, weaving flax into beautiful white linen cloth. They could hear the clack! clack! of his loom. It made the Twins feel much safer to hear this sound and see Tom’s shadow, for Tom was a friend of theirs, and they often went into his house and watched him weave his beautiful linen, which was so fine that the 
Queen herself used it. Up the road, in the window of the last house of all, a candle shone.
“Sure, Mother is watching for us,” said Larry. “She’s put a candle in the window.”
They went on more slowly now, past Tom Daly’s, past the Maguires’ and the O’Briens’ and several other houses on the way, and when they were quite near their own home Larry said, “Sure, I’ll never travel again without a bit of coal in my pocket. Look at all the danger we’ve been in this night, and never the smallest thing happening to us.”
And Eileen said, “Indeed, musha, ’tis well we’re the good children! Sure, the Good Little People would never at all let harm come to the likes of us, just as Grannie said.”
Chapter Five.
The Twins get Home.
When they were nearly home, the Twins saw a dark figure hurrying down the road, and as it drew near, their Mother’s voice called to them, “Is it yourselves, Larry and Eileen, and whatever kept you till this hour? Sure, you’ve had me distracted entirely with wondering what had become of you at all! And your Dada sits in the room with a lip on him as long as to-day and to-morrow!”
The Twins both began to talk at once. Their mother clapped her hands over her ears.
“Can’t you hold your tongues and speak quietly now—one at a time like gentlemen and ladies?” she said. “Come in to your father and tell him all about it.”
The Twins each took one of her hands, 
and they all three hurried into the house. They went into the kitchen. Their Father was sitting by the chimney, with his feet up, smoking his pipe when they came in. He brought his feet to the floor with a thump, and sat up straight in his chair.
“Where have you been, you Spalpeens?” he said. “It’s nine o’clock this instant minute.”
The Twins both began again to talk. Their Mother flew about the kitchen to get them a bite of supper.
“Come now,” said the Father, “I can’t hear myself at all with the noise of you. Do you tell the tale, Larry.”
Then Larry told them about the cakeen, and the silk hat, and Michael Malone, and the Tinkers, while his Mother said, “The Saints preserve us!” every few words, and Eileen interrupted to tell how brave Larry had been—“just like the good son in Grannie Malone’s tale, for all the world.”
But when they came to the geese part of the story, the Father said, “Blathers,” and got up and hurried out to the place where the fowls were kept, in the yard behind the house.
In a few minutes he came in again. “The geese are gone,” he said, “and that’s the truth or I can’t speak it!”
“Bad luck to the thieves, then,” cried the Mother. “The back of my hand to them! Sure, I saw a rough, scraggly man with a beard on him like a rick of hay, come along this very afternoon, and I up the road talking with Mrs Maguire! I never thought he’d make that bold, to carry off geese in the broad light of day! And me saving them against Christmastime, too!”
“Wait till I get that fellow where beating is cheap, and I’ll take the change out of him!” said the Father.
Eileen began to cry and Larry’s lip trembled.
“Come here now, you poor dears,” their Mother said. “Sit down on the two creepeens by the fire, and have a bite to eat before you go to bed. Indeed, you must be starved entirely, with the running, and the fright, and all. I’ll give you a drink of cold milk, warmed up with a sup of hot water through it, and a bit of bread, to comfort your stomachs.”
While the Twins ate the bread and drank the milk, their Father and Mother talked about the Tinkers. “Sure, they are as a 
frost in spring, and a blight in harvest,” said Mrs McQueen. “I wonder wherever they got the badness in them the way they have.”
“I’ve heard said it was a Tinker that led Saint Patrick astray when he was in Ireland,” said Mr McQueen. “I don’t know if it’s true or not, but the tale is that he was brought here a slave, and that it would take a hundred pounds to buy his freedom. One day, when he was minding the sheep on the hills, he found a lump of silver, and he met a Tinker and asked him the value of it.
“‘Wirra,’ says the