“Well, young Denville,” said Dick Miggles, the great swarthy fisherman, whose black hair, dark eyes, and aquiline features told that his name was a corruption of Miguel, and that he was a descendant of one of the unfortunates who had been wrecked and imprisoned when the Spanish Armada came to grief, and had finally resolved to “remain an Englishman.”
Dick Miggles rarely did anything in the daytime but doze and smoke. Of course, he ate and drank, and, as on the present occasion, nursed the little girl that Mrs Miggles, who was as round and snub and English of aspect as her lord was Spanish, had placed in his arms. At night matters were different, and people did say—but never mind.
“Well, young Denville,” said Fisherman Dick, as he sat on the bench outside his whitewashed cottage with the whelk-shell path, bordered with marigold beds, one of which flowers he picked from time to time to give the child.
“Well, Dick, where are my dabs?”
“Haw-haw,” said the fisherman, laughing. “I say, missus, where’s them dabs?”
Mrs Miggles was washing up the dinner things, and she came out with a dish on which were a number of fried heads and tails, with a variety of spinal and other bones.
“What a shame!” cried Morton, with a look of disgust. “I do call that shabby, Dick.”
“How was I to know that you would come after ’em, lad? I’d ha’ brote ’em, but I don’t like to come to your house now.”
“I say, Dick, don’t be a fool,” cried the lad. “What’s the good of raking up that horrid affair, now it’s all dead and buried?”
“Nay,” said Dick, shaking his head. “That ar’n’t all dead and buried, like the old woman, my lad. There’s more trouble to come out o’ that business yet.”