CHAPTER I.

Mistress O’Hara lives down by the sea,

A skittish and beautiful widow is she;

She has black shiny tresses, and curly buff toes,

And a heavenly tilt to the tip of her nose!

She has three little children, the eldest is four

(Nurse says he is naughty enough to be more);

The Twins are dear dumplings, and they and their brother

Are always in scrapes—
Of one kind, or another.

This morning poor Mistress O’Hara looks blue,

As indeed she has every reason to do;

For the third time this week Nurse has come in to say,

“If you please ’m, the children have all run away!”

“Oh! bother those children—well, first let us look

In the larder, to see what provisions they took;

If the pumpkin pie’s gone, they are off for the day,

If they only took raisins, they’re not far away.”

They look in the larder, and what do you think?

Find nothing whatever to eat or to drink.

“Alack!” says the Cook; “it is just as I feared:

The whole of my dinner has clean disappeared.”

“This is really too bad,” says Mama, in a rage,

As she slips on her pattens and turns down the page

Of the book she is reading, and starts out to find

The darlings, to give them a piece of her mind!

She takes a big stick and makes tracks for the sea,

Where she’s pretty well sure all the truants will be;

Yama-Guchi, she knows, leads the Twins by the nose,

And they patiently follow wherever he goes.

Sure enough, the first things that she sees on the shore

Are footprints, and further on several more—

And still further on there are two little rows

Of shoes, and some other superfluous clo’es.