“They aren’t lovely,” he said, looking at the uneven logs. “Still, they ought to keep your feet dry, and that’s something.” He worked the unwieldy boat round until her stern pointed to the shore, so that Norah could get in without being compelled to walk along the wet floor. Timsy hopped in, bare-legged and cheery, and they shoved off, moving gingerly among the half-submerged wood, which threatened momentarily to rip a hole in the rotten flooring.
“I’d hate to say a word against Ireland,” Wally remarked. “But you’d wonder why they’d build the landing-stage in the very middle of a submerged forest.”
“The stones did be a thrifle more convanient there.” Timsy offered as a solution.
“Well—maybe. Still it would be no great lift to take them a little further,” said Wally. “Does the boat never get snagged, Timsy?”
“She do, sir. Many’s the time me daddy’s mended her, and he at home. There’s no one to do it now, till I get a bit bigger—Patsy he’s destroyed with work, he says, and he can’t be lugging tools all this way, says he. And that Michael McCarthy, he’s no use at all in the world.” Timsy knitted his brows, a worried little figure. “It’ll be a good thing when the ould war is over and all them Germans kilt. Then me daddy’ll come back and fix everything.”
“Would you rather he hadn’t gone, Timsy?”
The small boy’s lip trembled.
“ ’Twas awful when he went. Me mother cried, and so did old Nanny and Bridget. But me mother and me daddy they says there’s no dacint man can stop out of it. I wisht I was big enough to go too. Will they take drummer-boys in your regiment, Mr. Wally? I’m pretty big when I howld meself straight.”
“I’m afraid you’ve got to be a bit bigger yet, old man,” Wally told him. “But you’ve got to be here, to keep an eye on the place; it must be a great comfort to your daddy to know you’re here, to look after your mother. There must be a certain number of fellows at home to mind Ireland in case the Germans should send troops here, you know; so we leave those at home who are too young or too old to march fast, and carry heavy loads, and do rough digging. You’re doing your bit as long as you’re helping at home.”
“Is that so, truly?” said Timsy, much cheered. “And could I go when I’m bigger?”