“Harold!” she cried. “Harold! where are you?”
A boy of fifteen, tall and lithe, bonny-looking, and fair-haired, came in through the back door. He wore a blue jersey, and seemed made for a seafaring life.
“Why, Molly, it’s not seven o’clock, and we haven’t had breakfast yet. I thought you girls were in bed at this time of day. Hallo! What’s the matter with the pigeon?”
He took the bird out of her hand, for Molly, in spite of her fourteen years, had begun to cry, and could not answer his question. He turned the bird over gently and smoothed its feathers. Then he fell to stroking Molly’s hair.
“Poor old Molly,” he said soothingly. “Don’t cry. Was it the cat?”
Molly sat down, took the pigeon back from him, and dried her eyes on its silky plumage.
“No,” she said, still choking a little, “it wasn’t the cat, it was a terrible great bird. Why should he have come at my pigeon, that you gave me, when there were so many others for him? I saw him, as I was dressing, come right down, and just as he was seizing poor Snowdrop I threw my shoe at him and frightened him, and then he let go Snowdrop, and made a swoop into Mrs. Timms’s garden, and carried off another pigeon instead. Oh, the horrible, cruel creature!”
Harold gave a long whistle. “It’s the falcon,” he said, “from the red cliffs. I know him, the cruel brute! He’s got his nest there, Molly, and he’s feeding young ones. That’s why it is he comes here now. Never you mind, Molly,” he added, as he saw the pigeon was dead, “I’ll give you another, and what’s more, I’ll have those young falcons to make all safe.”
Molly looked at him with her usual admiring gaze. Harold and she had been playmates since they were small children and lived as next door neighbours, and though they did not see quite so much of each other now that Harold’s father was dead, and his mother had come to live in a smaller cottage further up the street, they were still as fond of each other as ever. Molly had long ago given up her whole soul to Harold: she had no secret from him. He had been a brother to her all her life, and even more than a brother. Perhaps if she had had any brothers they would have either despised her and kept her down, or they would have spoilt her, but Harold did neither. He was her sun, cheering and warming her; as to being obliged to do without him, that was a thing she had never thought of.
But some little time before the appearance of the falcon Harold had suddenly taken it into his head that he must go into the royal navy. A coast-guard friend of his had for some time been trying to persuade him to join a training-ship, but Harold had steadily refused, thinking that a fisherman’s free life was the happiest in the world. But as he grew older he began to discover that the fisherman’s freedom was bought at a high price. They had to sell their fish for very little, and other people made the money they ought to have had. And for a great part of the year very little was done in the way of fishing, except lobster-and crab-catching, and lobsters and crabs were getting scarcer than they used to be. There were in fact too many fishermen, and they were gradually catching all the crabs and lobsters on the coast. And so Harold at last came to the conclusion that if he was to support his mother in her old age he should set himself to some work which would make him sure of a fixed income, and if possible a rising one.