Judith was crying now in good earnest. She had sunk down on the sand, and her crouching figure with the red glow from the east upon it looked oddly childish and small. Jemmy Three saw it over his shoulder.
“Look a-here, Judy,” he said gently, dropping his own knife and going over to the rocking, sobbing figure. “You look a-here, I tell you! What you cryin’ for, with eight barrels o’ fish ’most packed an’ a good fifty dollars ’most in your pocket? You better laugh! Come on, get up, and let’s give a rouser! Three cheers for the only girl in the land o’ the free an’ the home o’ the brave that darst tackle a school o’ mack’rel alone! Hip, hip—”
“Jemmy, Jemmy, don’t!”
“Hooray! Now let’s dress fish. You’re all right—don’t you worry about bein’ a blot, when I tell you you’re a reg’lar brick! I’m proud o’ you!”
It was the longest speech Jemmy Three had ever made, and the peroration surprised himself as much as it did Judith. He put up his hand and cleared something away from his eyes—it couldn’t have been scales, for he left the scales there.
At five mother came hurrying down to find Judith. The scale-strewn beach and the scale-strewn children, the barrels in orderly rows waiting to be rolled to the little landing-place of the steamer, the heap of clumsy wet netting—all told her the whole astonishing story. And what they did not tell, Judith supplemented eagerly.
“I declare! I declare!” gasped mother in mingled pride and pity, “you two poor things, putting in like this! You’ll be tired to death—you’ll be sick abed!”
“Guess we’ll weather it,” nodded Jemmy Three, working steadily. “But if you think we ain’t hungry enough to eat a pine shing—”
“I’ll go right home and boil some coffee and eggs and bring ’em down, and then I’ll go to work, too,” cried mother energetically. “You poor starved things!”
After a salt toilet in the surf, they ate a hurried breakfast with keen relish. Judith had forgotten her aching joints and lame muscles, and Jemmy Three had forgotten his sleepless night. Victory lay just ahead of them, and who cared for muscles or sleep!