'She said her business was important, sir. It's—it's about the pigeons,' explained Mrs Salt.
And before he could protest again, Mrs Halloran had thrust her way into the room and stood curtseying, with tears of recent weeping upon her homely and extremely dirty face. Behind her shuffled a lanky, sheepish-eyed boy, and took up his stand at her shoulder with a look half-sullen, half-defiant.
'It's about my Mike, sir,' began Mrs Halloran, in a lachrymose voice, and paused to dab her eyes with a corner of her apron. 'Which I'm sure, sir, we ought to be very grateful to you for all your kindness and the trouble you're takin', and so says the boy's father. For he's growin' up more of a handful every day, and how to manage him passes our wits.'
'Are you telling me, Mrs Halloran, that this boy of yours is the thief who stole my pigeons?'
Mr Pinsent, looking at the boy with a magisterial frown, began to wish he had not been quite so hasty in sending round the town sergeant.
'You did, didn't you, Mike?' appealed Mrs Halloran. And Mike, looking straight before him, grunted something which might pass for an admission. 'You must try to overlook the boy's manner, sir. He's case-hardened, I fear, and it goes sore to a mother's heart that ever I should rear up a child to be a thief. But as Halloran said to me, "Take the young limb to his Worship," Halloran says, "and maybe a trifle of correction by a gentleman in his Worship's position will have some effect," he says. But I hope, sir, you won't visit all the punishment on Mike, for he didn't do it alone; and though I'm not sayin' he don't deserve all he gets, 'tisn't fair to make him the only scapegoat—now is it, sir?'
'My good woman, I—I have no such intention,' stammered the mayor, glancing at the lad again, and liking his appearance worse than ever.
'I thank your Worship.' Mrs Halloran dropped a quick curtsey.
'And so I made free to tell Halloran, who was in doubt of it.
"Mr Pinsent," I said, "is a just-minded man, an' you may be sure," I
said, "he'll mete out the same to all, last as well as first."'
'Yes, yes!' The mayor took her up impatiently and paused for a moment, still eyeing the boy. 'Er—by the way, what age is your son?'
'Rising fifteen, sir; christened fifteen years ago last St Michael's Day, which is the twenty-ninth of September, though little good it done him. He takes after his father, sir. All the Hallorans shoot up tall, like runner beans; and thick in the bone. Or so his father says. For my part, I've never been to Ireland; but by the looks of en you'd say not a day less than seventeen. It seems like blood-money, my takin' five shillin' and handin' the child over—at his tender age—and me his own mother that nursed en!'