At this point a series of yells from the nursery, of the usual blood-curdling description, lifted Philippa from the scene of action as a wind whirls a feather.
"Buy them!" came back to me from the stairs.
I kept to myself my long-formed opinion that eating pollock was like eating boiled cotton wool with pins in it, and the bargain proceeded. The affair was almost concluded, when Mrs. Brickley, in snatching a fish from the bottom of her basket to complete an irresistible half-dozen, let it slip from her fingers. It fell at my feet, revealing a mangled and gory patch on its side.
"Why, then, that's the best fish I have!" declared Mrs. Brickley in response to my protest. "That's the very one her honour Mrs. Yeates would fancy! She'd always like to see the blood running fresh!"
This flight of sympathetic insight did not deter me from refusing the injured pollock, coupled with a regret that Mrs. Brickley's cat should have been interrupted in its meal.
Mrs. Brickley did not immediately reply. She peeped down the area, she glanced into the hall.
"Cat is it!" she said, sinking her voice to a mysterious whisper. "Your Honour knows well, God bless you, that it was no cat done that!"
Obedient to the wholly fallacious axiom that those who ask no questions will be told no lies, I remained silent.
"Only for the luck of God being on me they'd have left meself no betther than they left the fish!" continued Mrs. Brickley. "Your Honour didn't hear what work was in it on Hare Island Strand last night? Thim Keohanes had the wooden leg pulled from undher me husband with the len'th o' fightin'! Oh! Thim's outlawed altogether, and the faymales is as manly as the men! Sure the polis theirselves does be in dhread of thim women! The day-and-night-screeching porpoises!"
Seven years of Resident Magistracy had bestowed upon me some superficial knowledge of whither all this tended. I rose from the steps, with the stereotyped statement that if there was to be a case in court I could not listen to it beforehand. I then closed the hall door, not, however, before Mrs. Brickley had assured me that I was the only gentleman, next to the Lord Almighty, in whom she had any confidence.