"Keep her in a bit, Marjory. We must anchor over the fishing-house bank for a while, and get bait for this--this thing."
"Then I shall have to tack."
"Tack, indeed! If you don't like it, I'll steer and you can tackle this--this thing. Look out, Donald!--two trees and the white stone."
Round went the tiller. "Now, John!" said the girl; the sail came down with a clatter, the way slackened, the anchor, poised in Donald's watchful hands, splashed overboard, and the "Tubhaneer" drew up to it with her mast, and the two trees, and the white stone in a line.
"Well done, Miss Marjory; that was well done, whatever," rose Donald's voice softly, between renewed crunching; and two minor splashes following close on each other told that the Parson and Will had their hand-lines down. Then came a silence, broken only by the fitful gurgle of the water against the "Tubhaneer" as she swung round to the tide, and that monotonous crunch, crunch of the mussel-knife.
"John Roy, he wass takin' five whitin's from the bank last week," rose Donald's voice once more, quite causelessly. "It wass a bit of himself he was catching them with. It iss nothin' the whitin's iss liking so much as a bit of himself."
Then silence again, his hearers being too much accustomed to the intricacies of Donald's style to be startled by this novel fact in natural history. So, amid the stillness, a sudden jerk of the Reverend James's right hand, a pause of intense expectation--to judge by the rapt look on his comely face--then disappointment from bow to stern, and a general slackness.
"It will just be ain o' they pickers," mused Donald, recovering from his momentary idleness; "or maybe a sooker. It iss the pickers and sookers in this place that just beats all. Oo-aye! If it wass not a picker, it will be a sooker."
"What is the difference between a picker and a sucker, Donald?" asked Marjory, severely practical.
"'Deed, then, Miss Marjory, and it iss not any difference there will be between them at all. It is a sooker that will not be caring a tamn for the hook, and it is the picker that will not be caring a tamn either."