“Breakfast!” cried Dick. “Oh! I had forgotten all about that. I must go ashore; but I should have liked to see them get the mackerel out.”
“Oh! you’ll have plenty of time for that,” said Josh, beginning to row for the harbour and going close by the seine-boat, whose captain hailed them.
“Thank ye, lads,” he cried. “You, Will Marion, tell your uncle we’ve got as pretty a school as has been took this year.”
“Ay, ay!” shouted Will. Then taking one oar he rowed hard, and in a few minutes they were at the harbour, the pier being covered with the fisher folk.
“Best take this year,” sang Josh in answer to a storm of inquiries; and then Will sprang up the steps, to run home with a shield of good news to ward off the angry points that Aunt Ruth was waiting to discharge at him for not coming home to his meals in time.
The first faces Dick saw on the pier were those of his father and Arthur.
“I am so sorry, father!” began Dick.
“You’ve not kept me waiting, my boy,” said Mr Temple kindly. “I’ve been watching the fishing from the cliff.”
“You might have told me that you were going to see some seine-fishing,” said Arthur in an ill-used tone, as they entered the inn parlour, where breakfast was waiting.
“Didn’t know myself,” cried Dick. “Why, it’s ten o’clock! Oh! I am so hungry!”