"All right; don't, then! We shan't grieve," retorted Charlie. "We'll go with the Rokebys." But the Rokebys, though ready, as a rule, to go anywhere and everywhere, on this particular occasion were due at the railway station to meet a cousin who was arriving that morning; so it ended in only Belle and Isobel, with Charlie and Hilda Chester, setting off for the old town. The quay was a busy, bustling scene. The herring-fleet had just come in, and it was quite a wonderful sight to watch the fish, with their shining iridescent colours, leaping by hundreds inside the holds. They were flung out upon the jetty, and packed at once into barrels, an operation which seemed to demand much noise and shouting on the part of the fishermen in the boats, and to call for a good deal of forcible language from their partners on shore. The small fry and cuttle-fish were thrown overboard for the sea-gulls, that hovered round with loud cries, waiting to pounce upon the tempting morsels, while the great flat skate and dog-fish were put aside separately. "They're second-rate stuff, you see," explained Charlie Chester, who, with his hands in his pockets and his most seaman-like gait, went strolling jauntily up and down the harbour, inspecting the cargoes, trying the strength of the cables, peeping into the barrels with the knowing air of a connoisseur of fish, and generally putting himself where he was decidedly not wanted. "They only pack the herrings, and they salt and dry the others in the sun. You can see them dangling outside their cottage doors all over the town, and smell them too, I should say. When they're quite hard they hammer them out flat, and send them to Whitechapel for the Jews to buy--at least that's what the mate of the _Penelope_ told me the other day." "They eat them themselves too," said Hilda. "I went inside a cottage one day, and they were frying some for dinner. The woman gave me a taste, but it was perfectly horrid, and I couldn't swallow it. I had to rush outside round the corner and spit it out." "You disgusting girl!" said Belle, picking her way daintily between the barrels; "I wonder you could touch it, to begin with! Why, here are the women coming with the cockles. What a haul they've had! There's old Biddy at the head of them." "So she is!" cried Charlie; "her basket looks almost bursting!--Hullo, Biddy!-- 'In Dublin's fair city, Where girls are so pretty, There once lived a maiden named Molly Malon She wheeled a wheelbarrow Through streets wide and narrow, Singing, "Cockles and mussels alive, alive-O!"' Change it into Biddy, and there you are! I've an eye for an 'illigant colleen' when I see her!" "Sure, ye're at yer jokes agin, Masther Charlie," laughed Biddy; "colleen, indade, and me turned sixty only the other day! If it weren't for the kreel on me back, I'd be afther yez."