nd from which all
hope to get something.

The girls and women who have to clean the fish put on their working
dresses amidst noise and laughter, although the cold makes their
teeth chatter. Over everything they fold thick handkerchiefs, as a
protection to the head so that only the eyes and nose are visible;
for if the brine of the fish touches the hair, it causes a sore.

When they are ready they hasten in a crowd to the warehouse, where
they have entered into a contract beforehand. At once they join the
party to which they belong, and take their places in the midst of the
herring, which come higher than their wooden shoes, amidst barrels
and bowls of brine.

The unfortunate tallow candles placed on sticks in the heap of fish
are always in danger of being upset, or of being put out by being
snuffed with wet fingers.

They are soon supplied with short, sharp knives, and they proceed to
clean the herrings with great rapidity.

The snow is presently covered with huge footmarks, and the new layer
brought by each passing shower is soon trampled into mud.

Only up in the town and in the wider streets round about the school
is there enough for the boys to carry on their snow-balling, when at
last the morning arrives.

When the pale and sallow youngsters at the top of the school come
toiling along, with their dull burdens of Greek and Latin books,
their thoughts running upon a bygone literature, and their brains
crammed with grammar, half consisting of rules and half of exceptions
to those rules; and when they meet a troop of girls on their way
homewards, after having worked among the herrings half the night, it
may happen that the noisy girls will put their heads together and
laugh at them.

They have drawn down their handkerchiefs, so that their mouths are
now free. Chattering and laughing, they march up the middle of the
street, warm and rosy-cheeked after their labours, besprinkled with
fish scales up to the eyes.

Many of them are about the same age as the learned young gentlemen,
but they feel so much their superiors, that they laugh at the
half-admiring, half-contemptuous looks which they provoke.

The students feel this a little, but they find a solace in quoting
"_Plebs plebis_," or "_Semper mutabile_," or some such other classic
witticism.

They know that the herrings have come during the night, and they see
the harbour swarming with vessels, and the town astir with business.

But what of that? Was it