“Your egg is so close to mine that I can’t breathe—-”
“Move your egg, then, I can’t move mine!”
“You’re sitting so close, I can’t stretch my wings.”
“Neither can I. You’ve got as much room as I have.”
“I shall tumble if you crowd me.”
“Go ahead and tumble, then! There is plenty of room in the sea.”
[From one father to another ceremoniously.]
“Pardon me, but I’m afraid I shoved your wife off the rock last night.”
“Don’t mention it. I remember I shoved off your wife’s mother last year.”
We walked among the tiny whitewashed low-roofed cots, each with its silver-skinned fishes tacked invitingly against the door-frame to dry, until we came to my favourite, the corner cottage in the row. It has beautiful narrow garden strips in front,—solid patches of colour in sweet gillyflower bushes, from which the kindly housewife plucked a nosegay for us. Her white columbines she calls ‘granny’s mutches’; and indeed they are not unlike those fresh white caps. Dear Robbie Burns, ten inches high in plaster, stands in the sunny window in a tiny box of blossoming plants surrounded by a miniature green picket fence. Outside, looming white among the gillyflowers, is Sir Walter, and near him is still another and a larger bust on a cracked pedestal a foot high, perhaps. We did not recognise the head at once, and asked the little woman who it was.