fingers at home, all of them wearing the most
expansive crinolines, which, with their thin dresses and black
stockings, of nature's own provision, had a very comical effect!

"Faith!" exclaimed Mick, after watching these dusky belles with much
interest for some time, the lot of them chattering and laughing away,
showing their teeth, which a dentist would have given something to
possess for his showcase, "Oi'd loike Father O'Flannagan jist for to say
thim quare craychurs, Tom, me hearty, if ownly to say him toorn oop the
whoites ov his oyes. Bedad, he'd be afther sprinklin' 'em wid howly
wather an' exorcisin' on 'em, ez if he'd sayn the divvle, sure!"

Jones the signalman, who was standing near when Mick said this, laughed.

"Your old priest would have his work cut out for him in more ways than
that," said he, with a very significant wink to one of the other hands,
"if he'd only go to Grand Canary instead of Teneriffe!"

The name he mentioned at once made Mick cock his ear.

"Grand Canary," repeated my chum after the signalman, with a puzzled
look on his face. "Ain't thet the place, Tom, whare thim yaller burds
yer sisther Jenny has, sure, at home comes from? She s'id they wor
canaries, Oi'd take me davy!"

"Of course, they are, Mick," said I, in reply to this. "Why, mother
must have a hundred of them in the shop at this very minute, besides
those little ones she brought up herself which Jenny used to act as
nurse to!"

"Och, sure, Oi rimimber thim will enuff," answered Mick, with a
melancholy look on his face, as if his mind had turned back from Santa
Cruz to Bonfire Corner all of a sudden and to our little house there.
"An' thet little chap ov a canary thet had a crist on the top ov his
hid, loike a crown, sure, thet yer sisther Jenny used fur to make so
much ov--the little darlint!"

Whether this term of endearment of his was meant by Mick to apply to
Jenny or the bird, I can't say; but I could see clearly enough in what
direction his thoughts were concentrated.

"Begorrah, Tom," he said after a pause, during which his eyes were
apparently fixed on the celebrated `Peak' for which Teneriffe is better
known in the present day than on account of its canaries; for it is over
four hundred years since these little songsters were first discovered by
the Spaniards and imported into Europe, so that any novelty that might
have been attached to them has long since disappeared, "Oi'll git some
ov the purty craychurs