"I rushed straight out of the smithy, you see, to come up here and cram it into you. I went in to mother first, and then I promised her to go down and buy some mackerel for supper. Two smacks have come in to-day, they say."
Silla's face showed that this was a great piece of news. They were both natives of the town, and the arrival of the mackerel brought with it a number of pleasant recollections and pictures from the time when they lived in the square down by the wharves.
She looked a little undecided.
"What if I put on my shawl and went with you!" she exclaimed. "Wait for me down below, Nikolai, so that we don't go together in the street up here!"
It was a proposal that it was not easy to resist, she was so eager about it. And then he had been made foreman to-day!
She was not long in putting on her blue-striped dress and a shawl over her head and following him.
They hastened down together; she chattering gaily as in the old days when they had stolen out, he quite taken up with looking at and listening to her. They walked in the middle of the road, anything but carefully; clouds of dust arose at every step, but Nikolai only saw Silla, dark-eyed, warm and gay in the middle of it all.
Down in the town that warm summer evening, the streets were unusually busy about the fish-place. There was evidently something that occasioned more life and movement than usual. The bridge was full of people hanging over the railings and looking down at all those who were pushing their way forwards amid noise, shouts and cries to get a mackerel for their supper.
This greenish-blue, shining fish, so round and strong and quick, sea-built for lightning speed, its head formed for cleaving the water, and an elastic arrow-feather as the termination to an almost dangerously slender tail—it had already been glittering for two days on the stalls in the fish-market.
Even as late as yesterday morning it was a rarity, and only for the tables of the wealthier, but later in the afternoon another smack came in,—there had been a large haul out by the Hval Islands—and to-day two more loaded vessels, so that the market was over-stocked.