You're possessed with a damn fool idea, Jimmy, and ye got to
shake it off. Such a great-hearted, big mon as ye! I winna have
it! There's the dinner bell, and richt glad I am of it!"
That afternoon when pumpkin gathering was over and Jimmy had
invited Mary out to separate the "punk" from the pumpkins, there
was a wagon-load of good ones above what they would need for their
use. Dannie proposed to take them to town and sell them. To his
amazement Jimmy refused to go along.
"I told you this morning that Casey wasn't calling me at prisent," he
said, "and whin I am not called I'd best not answer. I have promised
Mary to top the onions and bury the cilery, and murder the bates."
"Do what wi' the beets?" inquired the puzzled Dannie.
"Kill thim! Kill thim stone dead. I'm too tinder-hearted to be
burying anything but a dead bate, Dannie. That's a thousand years
old, but laugh, like I knew you would, old Ramphirinkus! No, thank
you, I don't go to town!"
Then Dannie was scared. "He's going to be dreadfully seek or go
mad," he said.
So he drove to the village, sold the pumpkins, filled Mary's order
for groceries, and then went to the doctor, and told him of Jimmy's
latest developments.
"It is the drink," said that worthy disciple of Esculapius. "It's the
drink! In time it makes a fool sodden and a bright man mad. Few men
have sufficient brains to go crazy. Jimmy has. He must stop the drink."
On the street, Dannie encountered Father Michael. The priest
stopped him to shake hands.
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