The Elephant Island Chronicles

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Two Pair of Truants

By Beach and Bog-Land Some Irish Stories

By Jane Barlow

Foreword by Gio Marron

Foreword

In an age of national revival and literary gravitas, Jane Barlow stood apart—not by rejecting Ireland’s rural life, but by portraying it with clarity, affection, and mischief. “Two Pair of Truants”, nestled within her 1905 collection By Beach and Bog-Land, is one of her most deftly balanced pieces: humorous without malice, provincial without condescension, and vividly local without descending into caricature.

Barlow was among the few late-Victorian Irish writers to center her fiction on the domestic and social rhythms of the countryside without the scaffolding of myth or melodrama. Rather than depicting Ireland as a political chessboard or romantic ruin, she offered it as a living, breathing, wonderfully muddled place—where children skip school, mothers fret, policemen misidentify toddlers, and donkeys refuse to cooperate.

In “Two Pair of Truants,” we follow two overlapping misadventures: one by Minnie and Baby Lawlor, little girls who seize an accidental holiday to chase glimpses of aristocratic grandeur; the other by Mick and Rosanna Tierney, would-be fairgoers who ditch their siblings at a police barracks to enjoy the pleasures of Killavin Fair unburdened. The ensuing chaos—of lost children, mistaken identities, and a community’s hilariously misplaced reactions—becomes a canvas for Barlow’s quiet satire.

What gives the story its enduring charm is not just the plot, but the way Barlow inhabits her world. Her ear for Hiberno-English is pitch-perfect, her eye for social foibles sharp, and her tone unsentimental yet humane. The children here are not angels nor moral lessons in motion; they are mischievous, imaginative, and gloriously flawed. The adults, for their part, are equal parts worried, clueless, and stubborn. Authority figures fumble, assumptions pile up, and what should be a crisis dissolves into a comedy of errors.

Behind the humor, however, is a subtle commentary on adult hypocrisy and the blurry lines between order and disorder in small communities. Barlow doesn’t scold; she observes. And what she observes is both timeless and particular: the petty tyrannies of domestic life, the fleeting thrills of forbidden adventure, and the constant tension between propriety and freedom.

“Two Pair of Truants” deserves renewed attention not just as a charming children's caper, but as a finely constructed piece of realist storytelling that gently mocks the structures of rural life while celebrating its characters’ irrepressible vitality. Jane Barlow’s fiction, long overshadowed by her more canonical contemporaries, rewards us with an Ireland not torn by rebellion or framed in Celtic mist—but by laughter, misunderstanding, and the ever-complicated art of getting children to school on time.

By Beach and Bog-Land: Some Irish Stories“Two Pair of Truants”by Jane Barlow

Ever since little Minnie Lawlor, accompanied by her mother and younger sister, had come to live with her grandmother in a gate-lodge of Shanlough Castle, her great wish had been to visit the castle itself, which was always whetting her curiosity by showing just the rim of one turret, like the edge of a crinkled cloud, over the rounded tree-tops in the distance. But it was not until some months had passed that she found an opportunity. Then, on a showery May morning, her mother set off early to Killavin Fair; her grandmother was pinned to the big chair in the chimney-corner by an access of rheumatics; Lizzie Hackett, the cross girl who scrubbed for them, sent word that she could not come till noon; and, as the last link in this chain of lucky chances, the rope-reins of Willie Downing’s ass-cart snapped right in front of the lodge gate just when Minnie and Baby were setting off for school. “Bad manners to you, Juggy, for a contrary ould baste!” Willie was saying as he halted for repairs. “Would nothin’ else suit you but to set me chuckin’ th’ ould reins till they broke on us in a place where a man hasn’t so much as a bit of string?” Willie, being twelve years old, seemed of formidable age and size to Minnie, who was seven: but the good-natured expression of his face, where large freckles made a well-covered pattern, emboldened her to propose the plan which had occurred to her at the sight of the empty ass-cart. As a preliminary, however, she supplied him with the longest bit of twine she could twitch from the thrifty wisp hung on the hook of a dresser. After which, “Is it anywheres near the castle you’ll be drivin’ to?” she inquired, pointing in that direction.

“I’m apt to be passin’ it pretty middlin’ near,” said Willie, struggling to knot a pair of rather skimpy ends.

“And do you think you could be takin’ me and Baby along wid you that far?” said Minnie.

“What for at all?” he said, looking doubtful.

“To see the grandeur that’s in it,” replied Minnie.

“Up at th’ ould place?” said Willie. “I never heard tell there was any such a thing in it.”

“Well, there’s grand people in it, at all events,” said Minnie. “Me grandmother does be sayin’ the Fitzallens hasn’t their equals next or nigh them. Lords of the land they are, and the top of everythin’. I’d like finely to be seein’ them, and so would Baby. But if we’ve any talk of walkin’ a step up the avenue, me grandmother always says: ‘On no account suffer them, Maria; it mightn’t be liked by the Family.’ So we do be stoppin’ in the little ugly shrubbery.”

“I dunno is there e’er a lord in it,” said Willie, doubtfully. “If there is, I never laid eyes on him.” This was disappointing.

“I suppose you’re very ignorant,” Minnie remarked after a slight pause, as if she had sought and found a satisfactory explanation.

“Pretty middlin’ I am, sure enough,” Willie said more decidedly, and then added, as if he, too, had hit upon a probable conjecture: “Belike yous would be wantin’ to see Mrs O’Rourke, th’ ould housekeeper?” Minnie might have replied truly that she had never heard tell of any such person; but as the idea seemed to remove her new acquaintance’s difficulties she answered: “Ay, sure we could go see her if you took us along. I can step in meself over the wheel, and you can aisy give Baby a heft up.” “But in my belief it’s goin’ to school the two of yous had a right to be,” Willie said, relapsing into doubt again as he glanced at their small bundle of ragged-edged books.

“Och, me mother’d say we might have a holiday this minyit, only she’s went to the fair,” Minnie affirmed confidently, though she might have had some difficulty in reconciling this belief with her gladness that there was not present anybody whose permission need be asked. “I’ll get in first.”

“Themselves inside there might be infuriated wid the whole of us,” said Willie, still unconvinced.

“Sure you’re not a tinker, are you?” Minnie said, ostentatiously surveying the no-contents of the cart. “They do be biddin’ us have nothin’ to say to tinkers, but ne’er a tin can or anythin’ I see in it.” As Willie’s objections seemed to be over-ruled by this argument, she continued: “So Baby and I’ll run in and leave our books, and get our good hats; we’ll be back agin you have the reins mended—mind you wait for us.”

Her anxiety about her appearance before the eyes of the grand people made her risk losing the chance of seeing them at all as she hurried herself and her sister into their best jackets and new hats trimmed with pink gauze and daisies; while a wild hope she secretly entertained that they would be offered hospitality up at the castle led her to discard the basket containing their dinners. Baby, indeed, was inclined to demur at this, so Minnie compromised the matter by extracting the two oranges which crowned the menu, and Baby, bearing the golden balls, followed as contented as any ordinary queen.

The ass-cart had obligingly waited for them, and Willie Downing had spread a sack for them to sit on at the back. He also helped Baby to scramble up, but unfortunately said to Minnie, “You’d better be keepin’ a hold on her, for ones of that size don’t have much wit. She’d drop off as aisy as a sod of peat, and be delayin’ me to pick her up”—a remark which Baby resented, as albeit three years short of Minnie’s age, and thrice as young as Willie, she had a strong sense of her own dignity. Otherwise the drive was very thoroughly enjoyable. The cart was not, indeed, a luxurious vehicle, being simply a flat wooden tray on wheels, with no springs to soften its jolts, and no rail to prevent one of them from jerking out an unwary passenger. But the little girls thought it a most desirable substitute for their stuffily stupid schoolroom, and when they were rocked as if in a boat on a choppy sea, Minnie said that it was as good as going two ways at once. Juggy’s pace was slow, as suited her venerable appearance, for many years had made her as white as if she had been bleached and as stiff as if she had been starched. Willie had a thick ash stick, with which he every now and then made a loud rattling clatter on the front board of the cart. “You might as well,” he explained, “be batin’ ould carpets as Juggy, but the noise keeps her awake sometimes.” Minnie and Baby, however, had so much to look at in the strange bog-land through which the cart was passing that they were in no hurry for the end of their drive. In fact, even Minnie felt a little forlorn when Willie drew up at a small gate in a high stone wall and said: “I’ll be droppin’ yous here. It’s the nearest I can be bringin’ yous to the castle. You’ll find your ways to it pretty middlin’ aisy by them shrubbery paths, unless you take the wrong turn; you might ready enough, for there’s a dale of diff’rint walks through it, but they’ll bring you somewheres anyhow. Git along out of that, Juggy.” For then it suddenly occurred to her that they had come a long way, which they must travel back all by themselves. Willie’s directions, too, were not by any means as clear as she could have wished, but no more were to be had, as Juggy started perversely without her usual delay; and although he shouted something as he jogged away, they could make out only the words “pretty middlin’,” and it was useless to call “what?” Soon the sounds of the creaking wheels and clattering stick died out of hearing; so Minnie took Baby in tow and ran into the shady shubberies, hoping rather uneasily for the best.

Now, on this same May morning, and in the same neighbourhood, two other young persons were planning an adventurous expedition. Mick and Rosanna Tierney, who lived in the village of Glasdrum, not far from Shanlough Castle, were bigger children than Minnie and Baby Lawlor, and attended the white-washed school near the Lawlor’s gate-lodge, but less regularly than they would have liked to do. For when they were kept at home it was by no means to amuse themselves, and they much preferred their holidays at school. On this morning, however, although they grumbled over their tasks, it was not because they were prevented from pursuing their studies, but because they particularly wanted to go and spend their pennies at Killavin Fair. Mick had five and Rosanna had four, partly in halfpence, so that when their wealth was all spread out on the top of the low yard wall, the row of coins looked long enough to buy almost anything. And at Killavin Fair wonderful purchases might be made. The young Tierneys had heard that you could get four sugar-sticks, “the len’th of your arm,” for one penny, and there were swinging boats, and a theatre, and other shows to which the same sum would procure admission. Accordingly, they had set their hearts firmly upon it. But unluckily Mrs Tierney had been told that “great bargains entirely” would appear there in the shape of “rael grand blankets, that heavy you could scarce believe the weight of them, wid a quare raisonable price on them whatever,” and having scraped together a few shillings she was very anxious to inspect these wares. To Mick and Rosanna, in this warm May weather, heavy blankets seemed highly uninteresting, but their mother saw further and considered her business of more importance than sugar-sticks or merry-go-rounds. Thus it happened that Rosanna and Mick were required to stay at home minding Biddy and Peter. The charge seemed to saddle them with quite disabling incumbrances; for Peter was subject to panics at anything new and strange in his eighteen months’ experience of life, and would certainly roar without ceasing if brought in among the marvels of the fair, while three-year-old Biddy, though quiet and tractable, was too little to walk, and too heavy to be carried, a couple of Irish miles. “Sure, you might as well be liftin’ a sack of pitaties,” said Rosanna; and Mick added: “Ay, bedad, and you could aisy be shyin’ a one of them down the road as far as she’d go without whingein’ to rest.” Yet though matters looked so hopeless the day was still young when a promising scheme presented itself to them. Mick had just captured Peter, who was in the act of toddling off up the street on some excursion of his own, and who loudly resented his arrest.

“Och, now, whisht bawlin’,” Mick said to Peter. “Was it losin’ yourself you wanted to be? Bobby Byrne was tellin’ me,” he remarked to Rosanna, “that they got a stray kid out on the bog one day last week. Belongin’ to the tinkers they thought it was.”

“And what did they do wid it?” Rosanna inquired.

“Brought it to the Shanlough Barracks down below there till the polis would be findin’ out who owned it.”

“I wish to goodness we could be lavin’ these two there,” said Rosanna.

“I wish we could so,” said Mick.

“We could carry them that far ready enough—it’s only a shortish step,” Rosanna went on slowly, as if she were considering something really possible; “and then, if we’d left them down there, we might skyte over the bog to Killavin, that’s the nearest way, and see the fair, and pick them up again when we would be comin’ back, as handy as anythin’. The polis ’ud mind them first-rate; it’s their business to look after whatever’s gone lost.”

“But sorra a bit of these ones is lost,” objected Mick.

“And sure, couldn’t we very aisy lose them,” said Rosanna, “somewheres convanient to the barracks?”

“The ould lads,” Mick said, meaning the police, “would know right well whose childer they are, and where they come from.”

“And what great harm if they did, you gaby?” said Rosanna. “And besides, aren’t they a new set that’s only a few weeks in it? Very belike they never laid eyes on either of them.”

“Gaby yourself,” Mick said, “but Biddy’d be apt to tell them anyhow. She’s gettin’ to spake terrible plain.”

“Biddy niver say’s e’er a word except ‘Yis’ when she’s wid strange people; she’s a good child,” Rosanna said with confidence. “But I was thinkin’ if we might by chance run up agin mother in the fair, and then where’d we be?”

“Och, for the matter of that we could dodge her aisy enough in the crowds there’ll be in it,” said Mick.

“Let’s thry, at all events,” said Rosanna, suddenly, pursing up her mouth, and eyeing him with the expression of a magpie who is not sure how near he may venture to hop. And Mick said, “We will, bedad.”

Not very long afterwards, Police-Sergeant Corry, sitting with his pipe and newspaper in the porch of Shanlough Constabulary Barracks, saw crawl in at the gate a small child, who was followed on foot by another somewhat bigger. “Run away with you,” he called to them, and resumed his reading. But when he finished his column he perceived that they had sat down half way up the flagged path to the door, with no apparent intention of moving on. So he went to investigate.

His inquiry was on the whole unsuccessful. The baby’s evidence was quite inarticulate, and the little girl replied “Yis” to all his questions in a manner which made her a most unsatisfactory witness. It was a lonely place, on the edge of the bog, with no other houses near, and nobody else in sight; though, if he had only known, two pairs of eyes were all the while watching him through the thick fuschia hedge. “They don’t belong to tramps,” he said to himself, “for they’ve got very respectable boots on them, and dacint hats. Tell me, now, which way you’re after comin’ along here, there’s a good child,” he said to Biddy, and Biddy said “Yis.” Just then it began to rain violently, which led the Sergeant to bring them indoors to his wife, who was sewing in the little parlour. “Here’s a couple of childer that can’t give an account of theirselves,” he said to her. “We’d better keep them a bit, and as like as not we’ll presently have somebody peltin’ in with inquiries.” Whereupon Mrs Corry, having had some experience of such cases, gave them slices of sugar-sprinkled bread, and several empty spools to play with in a corner, while immediately afterwards two figures might have been espied running off at full speed across the bog, among the grey curtains of the shower.

About this time Tom Flannery was digging in his potato-patch at the fork of the Letteresk and Glasdrum roads. “Faix now, but Lizzie Hackett’s in a fine hurry, whatever ails her,” he said to himself as he became aware of a young woman trotting along the dyke. “Where at all are you takin’ off wid yourself to?” he shouted as soon as she was near enough; and Lizzie shouted back across the low stone wall: “Sure, they’re in great distraction above at the lodge. The two childer’s lost. They went out this mornin’ early, but a while ago the schoolmistress looked in wid word they’d niver been next or nigh her. Stole they are by them tinkers, I’ll bet you anythin’, and their poor mother away at the fair, and the ould woman shakin’ in her chair fit to thrimble the house down on her head. But runnin’ up to Connolly’s farm I am, for Minnie and Baby’s went there a few times along wid me, and its mostly the only place they know their way to hereabouts. You didn’t be chance see them goin’ by this mornin’?”

“Sorra a stim, this mornin’ nor that mornin’,” said Tom. “But if they’re strayed or stole you’d a right to lave word with the polis.”

“Och, lave word with them yourself,” Lizzie said, setting off again, partly because she never liked taking advice, and partly because she did not now wish to lengthen her hot race by calling at the barracks.

Tom rejoined: “Bedad, I’ve somethin’ else to do, me dear!” But when, by-and-by, he finished his job, he turned a bit out of his homeward way that he might pass the police-station. Sergeant Corry was looking over the arched gate into the road. “Dry weather, Sergeant, when it isn’t wet,” said Tom. “Did you hear tell anythin’ of two children bein’ lost?”

“What sort of childer now?” said the Sergeant. “Well, I dunno very rightly,” said Tom. “I never seen them; but they’re out of the lodge over there at the castle entrance, and ould Mrs Lawlor’s expectin’ her death wid the fright. A little girl and a baby, I think, they said.”

“Sure enough they answer to that description, the two I have inside here. The small one’s no size to spake of, and the other’s a girl, though she hasn’t got the gift of the gab yet. I’ll send them over to the lodge with Doyle and Atkinson that’s about settin’ off pathrollin’. It ’ill be a good job to get them shifted into their own quarters before night.”

To the lodge, accordingly, two tall constables carried the little Tierneys, encountering by the way a fierce shower, which twisted Biddy’s black locks into dripping rats’ tails, and soaked Peter’s fluff of fair hair till it shrunk into nothing, like a wisp of wet thistledown. Their arrival caused bitter disappointment to Mrs Lawlor, junior, who had lately returned to her despoiled home. She vehemently declared the forlorn-looking bundles to be no children of hers, nor anyways like them, and was disposed to resent the constables’ conjecture that Minnie and Baby had just run off for diversion with some of their schoolfellows to the fair. However, she consented to keep these strange children while a search was being made, and she beguiled her suspense by getting them into dry garments, outgrown by the probable victims of tinkers and tramps.

Meanwhile, Minnie and Baby had in reality been experiencing many vicissitudes. At first all had gone fairly well with them. After some roaming they had emerged from the shrubberies on to a sloping lawn, whence they had a grand view of the castle with its turrets and towers. It pleased them so much that they sat down on a bench beneath a big sycamore to enjoy the prospect and their oranges. This was the highest point of their success; for when they had just finishing peeling, and the grass all around them was thickly strewn with shreds of white-lined golden rind, suddenly there appeared to them an elderly, angry man in a straw hat, who wanted to know what they meant by trespassing on his grounds, and bade them clear up that disgraceful litter at once, and stood pointing his stick and glaring dreadfully at every single scrap of peel until it was picked up; and then, as they fled away like scared rabbits, shouted that he would give notice to the police to keep an eye on them. Thenceforward troubles gathered and gloom. When they escaped from the labyrinth of shrubberies they found themselves in strange fields, where they met with herds of what were certainly beasts, and, in Minnie’s opinion, most likely bulls. They were hunted out of a rickyard by a barking dog, and in their flight Baby lost a shoe, which they dared not turn back to discover. Soon afterwards she ran a thorn into her unshod foot and could hardly hobble along. It came on to rain so heavily that their new hats were battered and drenched out of all shape and hue, and Minnie tore a sleeve of her good jacket into ribbons scrambling through a hedge. As time elapsed they felt more and more thoroughly lost, and their terrors were increased by a dread that all the while they might perhaps be trespassers with the eye of the police upon them.

But at last, when they had almost despaired of ever, as Baby said, “bein’ anywhere again,” as they stumbled along the edge of a ploughed field, they were met by a big boy carrying a bunch of bright tinware. Minnie had luckily still sense enough left to explain that they were looking for a gate-lodge of the castle; upon hearing which the boy just caught each of them by an arm and swung them through a gap in the ragged hedge, setting them down plump in the middle of a muddy lane. “Sure, there’s one widin’ a couple of stones’ throws off you, only you was headin’ the wrong way to get to it,” he said, pointing along the lane. “Them’s the gate-posts glimpsin’ at you out of the trees.” And the children perceived with relief and amazement that so it actually was. Full of joy and confidence they started again, but before they had gone many steps they met Lizzie Hackett setting out to see if there were any signs of the constables coming back with news of what, in her own mind, she called “them young torments.”

“Saints and patience!” she said when she saw them, “and so there you are. I declare to goodness I thought it was a couple of beggar childer comin’ along, you’re that quare shows. Where in the earthly world have you been the whole day?”

“We just took a bit—a bit of a walk like,” Minnie said, beginning to feel that their difficulties might not yet be all at an end.

“Well, to be sure—a fine bit of a walk,” said Lizzie, “wid your poor granny and your poor ma terrified out of their sivin sinses, and meself kilt stravadin’ over the parish after you. A race’s runnin’ on you for a couple of as bould childer as there is in Ireland.” Lizzie, being out of humour with everybody, preferred the chance of paying out the truants for the trouble they had caused her to the excitement of announcing their return, so she continued: “Howsome’er, you’ve no call to be hurryin’ yourselves now. You can be stoppin’ away as long as you plase, and longer after that again, for your ma says she won’t be bothered any more to put up wid the likes of such ungovernable brats, and she’s got herself a couple of nice, good little childer to keep that won’t be annoyin’ her losin’ themselves about the country instead of goin’ to their school. And she’s after dressin’ them illigant in the cloth cape that was belongin’ to you, Miss Minnie, and a one of Baby’s cotton frocks, and the two of them’s sittin’ this minyit as grand as anythin’ at all before the fire in the parlour. Pettin’ them finely herself is and not thinkin’ a thraneen of yous. It’s in your beds that them ones ’ill be sleepin’ this night. But sure you’d rather be tearin’ about under the rain in the fields like the rabbits,” said Lizzie, pulling her shawl over her head and walking on. “And it pitch dark,” she added over her shoulder.

If Minnie had been in her ordinary frame of mind she would have perceived how improbable this story sounded, and would have said to Baby: “Och, never mind; she’s only romancin’.” Just then, however, she was too tired and bewildered to take a sensible view of anything, and what Lizzie asserted alarmed and enraged them both. Still they more than half hoped that they would find it was not true at all. But as they trotted and hobbled past the parlour window they got a glimpse into the fire-lit room, and there, sure enough, two horrid little children were seated before the hearth, one wearing a pink frock, the other Minnie’s well-known brown cape. And he—which was the worst part of it—sat on Minnie’s mother’s knee, with a bitten biscuit in his hand. “’Deed she has really got them,” Minnie said to Baby with a sort of groan. “There’s no good in us goin’ in any more.” And both the little girls flung themselves down on a mossy log, which had been made into a seat, beneath an old laurel bush near the door. They had not noticed the sound of footsteps that were following them, but just then two figures came rushing by and darted into the house. In the parlour Mrs Lawlor heard the patter of feet, which she had been listening for so long, and she jumped up very quickly, only to meet with another disappointment.

Mick and Rosanna Tierney had enjoyed their time at the fair. They saw two shows, and bought as many sweets as possible with their remaining pennies. They were careful not to meet their mother, nor did they forget how desirable it was that they should be at home again before her. The heavy rain, too, made it easier for them to tear themselves away from among the stalls and booths and carts and set off across the bog to pick up Biddy and Peter at the barracks. Rosanna had three fruit drops and half a peppermint sugar-stick tied up for them in a corner of her wet pinafore. Mick had meant to bring Biddy a bull’s-eye, but he put it into his mouth just to taste, and forgot to take it out until it was too late.

At the police barracks the rain had driven Sergeant Corry indoors, but he came out when he heard the children clattering into the porch.

“If you plase, sir,” Mick said, panting, “we want the couple of childer we left—I mane we lost—here this mornin’ going to Killavin—a little one, and a bigger little girl—dark hair she has, the same as her.” “They’ve straw hats on them,” Rosanna struck in, “and the youngster has a grey flannen frock, and Biddy’s is blue, and she’s black stockin’s. She wouldn’t tell you her name, or say anythin’ only ‘Yis.’”

“Them’s the very two we had here till a while ago I packed them off to Mrs Lawlor up there at the castle lodge. Bedad,” said the sergeant, “it’s the wrong children I’m after sendin’ her. And what do you mean, I should like to know, by leaving them crawling about here and giving trouble and annoyance?”

But the Tierneys were not waiting to listen. “Come along, Rosanna,” said Mick, “we might be in time to get them yet if we hurry.” And they did hurry with an impetuosity which brought them head foremost into the Lawlors’ kitchen.

“What brings you here at all?” poor Mrs Lawlor said in much vexation when she saw who they were not. “It seems to me every strange child in the parish is takin’ upon itself to come tumblin’ in on top of us except me own little girls, and the deer knows where they may be.”

“We was only wantin’ to fetch away our two,” said Mick. “The sergeant sent you the wrong childer. That’s Peter you’ve got, ma’am—och, and there’s Biddy. You take hold of her, Rosanna; I’ve took him. And I seen a couple of little girls sittin’ roarin’ on the sate there next door, and we runnin’ in, that might be your ones, ma’am.”

Out sped Mrs Lawlor, hopeful again, and this time not in vain. “Children dear, what happint you at all?” she said, “and where have you been?”

“We got into an ould donkey-cart,” Minnie said deplorably, “and then we lost our ways—and an ould man’s after settin’ the police to keep an eye on us—and Baby’s one shoe is off her, so the other’s no good; and she’s run a thorn into her foot; and I’ve tore the cuff off of me sleeve; and our hats is destroyed. But we thought there wasn’t any use goin’ in, for Lizzie tould us you’d took them other ones instead.”

“A donkey-cart!” said Mrs Lawlor. “I always said those thieves of tinkers were at the bottom of it. But come in, me jewels; sure you’re drowned and perished. The polis ought to be ashamed of theirselves for not minding their business better.”

And in Mrs Lawlor’s mind, indeed, the blame was permanently shared by the tinkers and the police, which was of course convenient for her children, and probably did not in any way affect either the police or the tinkers.

As for the young Tierneys, they got home with such guilty expedition that they were all discovered innocently safe and dry by their own fireside when Mrs Tierney returned, with sugar-sticks, from the fair. And thus we must fear that the episode ended in a lamentable failure of poetical justice to all parties concerned.

From all of us here at the Elephant Island Chronicles, we hope you have enjoyed this short story by Jane Barlow. Until next time, stay curious.

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