"Oh no!" cried Isobel hastily. "It isn't a steamer; it's a piece of poetry. I've just been reading it with mother, and it's most delightful. I could lend it to you if you like. We brought the book with us." Mrs. Jackson's acquaintance with the muse, however, seemed to be limited to the hymns in church, and a hazy remembrance of certain pieces in her spelling book when a child, and being apparently unwilling to further cultivate her mind in that direction, she declined the offer on the score of lack of time. "Not but what Jackson's fond of a bit of poetry now and again," she admitted. "He sings a good song or two when he's in the mood, and he do like readin' over the verses on the funeral cards. He pins them all up on the kitchen wall where he can get at them handy. What suits me more is something in the way of a romance--'Lady Gwendolen's Lovers,' or 'The Black Duke's Secret'--when I've time to take up a book, which isn't often, with three sets of lodgers in the house, and a girl as can't even remember how to make a bed properly, to say nothing of laying a table, and 'ull take the dining-room dinner up to the drawing-room." The much-enduring Polly, though certainly not an accomplished waitress, was the most good-tempered of girls, and an invaluable ally in saving the treasured specimens of flowers or sea-weeds which Mrs. Jackson, in her praiseworthy efforts at tidiness, was continually clearing out, under the plea that she "hadn't imagined they could be wanted." "She even threw away my mermaids' purses and the whelks' eggs that we found on the sand-bank," said Isobel to her mother. "But Polly climbed into the ashpit and grubbed them up again. She washed them in a bucket of water, and they're quite nice now; so I shall put them in a box, to make sure they'll be safe. Polly's father is part owner of a schooner, and sometimes they fish up the most enormous fan shells. She says she'll ask him to give me a few when she's time to go home, but she hasn't had a night out for nearly three weeks, the season's been so busy." "Perhaps old Biddy could get you some large fan shells," suggested Mrs. Stewart. "I believe they find them sometimes very far out on the beach when they're shrimping." Biddy was a well-known character in Silversands. She was a lively old Irishwoman, with the strongest of brogues and the most beguiling of tongues. In a blue check apron, and with a red shawl tied over her head, she might be seen every morning wheeling her barrow down the parade, where her amusing powers of blarney, added to the freshness of her fish, secured her a large circle of customers among what she called "the quality." She had a wonderful memory for faces, and always recognized families who paid a second visit to the town.