Page:Minnie's Bishop and Other Stories (1915).djvu/54

 return they stood in a group on the opposite shore and shouted until either John or Tom put out in a boat and ferried them home.

At very high tides the boat ran aground close up to Tom Dever's house, and an active child standing in the bow could jump right into the kitchen through the doorway—could almost have jumped into bed; but tides are as high as that only in March and September. During the rest of the year there is a small patch of beach to cross, even at full tide.

When I first met Onnie she must have been fourteen or fifteen years of age. She had stopped going to school. Her education was then complete; for she had reached what is called the sixth standard, and that is as far as the Irish educational authorities think a normal child ought to go.

At that time she possessed shoes and stockings, but wore them only on Sundays when she crossed to the mainland to go to church. The rest of the week she went barefooted, which was an economy for her parents and a convenience to herself. If you live on an island that, as well as being surrounded by, is also saturated with, water, it is much better to do without shoes and stockings.

I was sailing in a small boat, and the passage between the Devers' island and the mainland offered me a short cut home. The tide was ebbing, and the wind was very light. I knew I ought not to try the passage—that there probably would not be