"Well, young Denville," said Fisherman Dick, as he sat on the bench outside his whitewashed cottage with the whelk-shell path, bordered with marigold beds, one of which flowers he picked from time to time to give the child. "Well, Dick, where are my dabs?" "Haw-haw," said the fisherman, laughing. "I say, missus, where's them dabs?" Mrs Miggles was washing up the dinner things, and she came out with a dish on which were a number of fried heads and tails, with a variety of spinal and other bones. "What a shame!" cried Morton, with a look of disgust. "I do call that shabby, Dick." "How was I to know that you would come after 'em, lad? I'd ha' brote 'em, but I don't like to come to your house now." "I say, Dick, don't be a fool," cried the lad. "What's the good of raking up that horrid affair, now it's all dead and buried?" "Nay," said Dick, shaking his head. "That ar'n't all dead and buried, like the old woman, my lad. There's more trouble to come out o' that business yet." "Oh, stuff and nonsense!" "Nay, it isn't, my lad. Anyhow, I don't like coming to your place now, and there's other reasons as well, ar'n't there, missus?" "Now, I do call that shabby, Dick. Just because there's a bill owing for fish. I've told you I'll pay it some day, if papa does not; I mean, when I have some money." "Ay, so you did, lad, and so you will, I know; but I didn't mean that, did I, missus?" "No," came from within. "What did you mean, then?" "Never mind. You wait and see. I say, the old gentleman looks as if he'd got over the trouble, Master Morton. He was quite spry to-day." "No, he hasn't," said Morton. "It's quite horrible at home. He's ill, and never hardly speaks, and my sister frets all day long." "Do she though! Poor gal! Ah, she wants it found out, my lad. It wherrits her, because you see it's just as if them jools of the old lady's hung like to your folk, and you'd got to account for 'em." "Get out! Why, what nonsense, Dick." "What, dropped it agen, my pretty?" said the great fisherman, stooping to pick up a flower, and place it in the little fat hand that was playing with his big rough finger. "Ah, well, perhaps it be, but never mind. I say, though, the old gentleman looked quite hisself agen. My! he do go dandy-jacking along the cliff, more'n the best of 'em. He do make me laugh, he do. Why, hello, Master Morton, lad, what's matter?" "If you dare to laugh at my father, Dick," cried the boy, whose face was flushed and eyes flashing, "big as you are, I'll punch your head." "Naw, naw, naw, don't do that, my lad," said the fisherman, growing solemn directly. "I were not laughing at him. I were laughing at his clothes." "And if my father dresses like the Prince and the Duke and all the fashionable gentlemen, what is there to laugh at then? Suppose I were to laugh at you for living in that great pair of trousers that come right up under your arms?"