"I don't know whether I can quite explain it in French," replied Aggie; but seeing the Rokebys come up, she made a desperate effort to sustain her character as a linguist. "C'est l'endroit où on vend le poisson, vous savez."
Unfortunately she pronounced poisson like the English "poison," and mademoiselle held up her dainty little hands with a shriek of horror.
"Vere zey sell ze poison! Non, mon enfant! You sall nevaire take me zere! Madame Wright, see not permit zat you go! C'est impossible!"
"It's all right, mademoiselle," said Arthur, taking his nose for a moment out of his dictionary. "Aggie only meant poisson. The mater'll let the kids go, if you want to take 'em."
"Come along, mademoiselle, do!" said Charlie Chester cordially. "Venez avec moi! That's about all the French I can talk, because at school we only learn to write exercises about pens and ink and paper, and the gardener's son, and lending your knife to the uncle of the baker; a jolly silly you'd be if you did, too! You'd never get it back. Suivez-moi! And come and see the poisson. You'll enjoy it if you do."
"I'm sure she wouldn't," said Charlotte Wright, who liked to keep her governess to herself. "We haven't time, either—we must do our translation before dinner; and Joyce and Eric can't go unless we're there to look after them."
"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."