Wensday
I didn't do it. But Toby Ryan won't beleeve me. Old Toby Ryan 1st the greatest nark of a man under the sun. He works for the nuns and has a little cottage away down the end of the convent grounds. The cottage faces the side street and the verandah is quite close to the foot path-just like the cottage that the old Greek turned into a shop. It is a very, very old cottage. There are a lot of them in the street. They must be nearly a sentury old. I don't know why they make such a fuss bringing Captin Cook's old cottage out here. We have plenty old cottages as it is.
I don't beleeve Toby Ryan is an Irishman. He never makes a joke and he never sees one. Perhaps he comes from that part of Ireland where the people cannot see a joke. I don't mean the north-where the Scotch people are. My father told me that there is an Irish countie where the people have Welsh in them and it has spoilt their seise of humer which is, he says, a terrible thing to happen an Irishman. I am not sure ,which countie it is Weckford, I think, But I hope, if it isn't, that any Weckford person who reads my diery will not be down on me. My father didn't make it up. Someone else told him. Well, if it isn't Weckford, I don't know where it is. I am sure it isn't Cork or Kilkenny, becaase my grandparints came from there. Wherever it is, I bet Toby Ryan belongs to it. Perhaps Miss MsStinger. too, and the Daceys.
This old Toby-the nuns call him Mr Ryan; we have to, too, when the nuns are about-if a boy is sent a message to him, away down the end of the garden, he wouldn't think of giving him a peech, even if the trees are covered. In the grape seeson he wouldn't give you one grape, and in apple time wouldn't let you pick one up off the ground. Not even a lemon.
Now, a man who wouldn't give you a lemon must be meen. Suppose if he had oranges he would give them away because they are orange. But he hasn't any growing. If the girls go a message, he lets them pick up an apple if there's one in the grass; or he might give them a peech -if it had a speck on it. But not boys. Oh, no!
He hates boys.
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