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Patrick put a flea in her ear. She figured out that dinies must find metal by its smell, and if its smell was made stronger by simple heatin' they'd be unable to resist it. And it was so. Ye saw the chief justice runnin' down the street with all the dinies after him." The two members of the committee nodded.
"I'm just thinkin'. You've iron in your shoes and mainsprings in your watches and maybe pocket knives in your pockets. The dinies have a longin' for iron, and they go after it. They'll eat anything in the world that's got the barest bit of a taste of iron in it! Oh, it's perfectly all right, of course, but ye'll have to throw stones at them till the boat comes back.
And she tended to look puzzled, but she definitely looked pleased. Behind them, of course, the Committee of the Dail on the Condition of the Planet Eire explored McGillicuddy Island. They saw the big dinies sixty-footers and fifty-footers and lesser ones. The dinies ambled aimlessly about the island.
It was Timothy, the amiable six-foot black snake who faithfully and cordially did his best to keep the presidential mansion from falling down. Without him innumerable mouse-sized holes, gnawed by mouse-sized dinies, would assuredly have brought about its collapse. The president was grateful, but he'd meant to keep Timothy out of sight.
The dinies were not bright. The three committeemen and two members of the cabinet were thigh-deep in water when the boat came back. They still whacked valorously if wearily at intrusive diny heads. They still had made no progress in implanting the idea that the dinies should go away. The men from the mainland hauled them into the boat. They admitted that the president had returned to Tara.
A multicolored, multitudinous, swarming tide of dinies filled the highway from gutter to gutter. From the two-inch dwarfs to the purple-striped variety which grew to eight inches and sometimes fought cats, the dinies were in motion. They ran in the wake of the chief justice, enthralled and entranced by the smell of hot sheet iron. They were fascinated. They were bemused.
"Moira darlin'," said President O'Hanrahan gently, "you don't lock up dinies. They gnaw through steel safes. They make tunnels and nests in electric dynamos. You don't lock up dinies, darlin'!" "But I did!" she insisted. "They're still locked up. I looked just before we started for here!" The president looked at her very unhappily. "There's no need for shenanigans between us, Moira!"
They're out of work. Even Timothy. There's no dinies to speak of for them to earn a livin' by killin'. It's technological unemployment. They earned their way faithful, doin' work they knew an' loved. Now they're jobless. There's no work for them. What's to be done? There was a pause. The solicitor general said firmly: "I mean it! They've a claim on us! A claim of the highest order!
They were not interested in the visitors, but one of the committee members not Moira's grandfather shivered a little. "I've dreamed about them," he said plaintively, "but even when I was dreamin' I didn't believe it!" Two youthful dinies they would weigh no more than a couple of tons apiece engaged in languid conflict. They whacked each other with blows which would have destroyed elephants.
I showed him a bunch of dinies playin' leapfrog tryin' to get one of their number up to a rain spout so he could bite off pieces and drop 'em down to the rest. They were all colors and it was quite somethin' to look at.
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