tant or
romantic or sentimental songs (it is all one out there), and laugh with
a hearty sea-loudness. And if the mackerel will not bite at all we
invent a score of reasons and blame a dozen people and things. But
there we are--ourselves, the sea, and the heavenly dawn--the sea
heaving up to us, and ourselves ever heaving higher, up and over the
lop. It exalts us with it. We hardly need to talk. A straight look in
the face, a smile.... We are in the more immediate presence of one
another. Did we lie to each other with our tongues, the greater part of
our communications would yet be truth.

[Sidenote: _THE PRICE OF FISH_]

We sail or row home, turn the mackerel out on the beach, count them
back into the box, wash the blood off them, and stoop low, turning them
over and over, whilst we haggle for our price. The other day, with the
exuberance of the sea still upon me, I slapped old Jemima Caley's rusty
shoulder and lo! she rose her price one penny.

"Damme!" she said, "I'll gie 'ee ninepence a dozen if I has to go wi'
out me dinner for't! They _be_ fine fish."

"_Sweet_ fish, Jemima!"

"Lor' bless 'ee, yes!"

But she hawked them at twopence-halfpenny or threepence a pair
according to the customer. And now, her wry sly smile, peeping from
underneath her battered hat-brim, meets me at every back-street corner.

Soap and water, the buzz of the children, their mother's loud voice,
and mackerel for breakfast.... It is all quite prosaic and perfectly
commonplace, it is far from idyllic; yet it would need the touch of a
poet to bring out the wonder, the mystery, of it all: to light up the
door of the soul-house through which we pass to and fro, scarce
knowing.

Tony comes in early to dinner after a morning's frighting. His object
is to get an hour or so for sleep before the visitors come out from
their later lunch. Mam 'Idger says we are lazy; that she 'don't gie way
to it, she don't!' (She did a couple of days ago.) When the
after-dinner tea is finished, Tony makes a start for 'up over!' Mrs
Widger enquires if I have some writing to do--and asks also if I would
like to be awakened before tea-time!

Never does sleep at night come so graciously as that afternoon snooze,
while the sound of the sea and the busy noises of the square float
gently in at the windows; float higher and higher; float right away.
About half-past two, Tony goes down to take somebody out for a sail or
to paint his boats. I frequently do not hear h