"How do you account for this uncommon piety in a cat?" asked Guy.
"'Twas bred in him, s'poase. Anyhow, he was uncommon pious, and his good example is follered. Thiccy theer cat wud no more ate vish catched on Sunday than he'd fly. Wad'ee, Tom?"
Tom purred.
"I knawed it," said the man, washing the fish and pushing his forefinger through its gills.
The St. Ives women always enjoyed the reputation of being well endowed with tongue. Some people think their old vivacity is the result of foreign blood, but it is singular that the "gift" of tongue should follow only in the female line. A St. Ives man is quiet enough until his blood is up, and then he wants to hit something, or throw something overboard, and make a big noise in the open air. There is the story of three young women slipping into their pattens and going to the well with their pitchers for water. Their husbands were at sea. The young women began to talk, and they talked on and on until their husbands returned, and found them just at the beginning of an argument. So they off to sea once more, and back again, and the three women were still at the well, and getting interested in the argument. Then the three men took a long voyage, and returning with well-lined purses found their wives, now grown white, still at the well, but on the point of adjourning till the morrow to take up the thread of the old argument.
A CORNISH FISH WIFE.