stening.

"Forty feet high the tide rises sometimes, right on this very p'int.
That's why it's built so lofty. Look over the edge. See that sloping
wharf clean down into the water? Well, sir, that's where folks land
sometimes; and other times away up top here. My heart! The pretty
creetur!"

Joel abruptly checked his team and stooped above something lying on the
wide planking of the pier. Then he lifted the object and handed it to
Dorothy, explaining:

"That's a poor little coddy-moddy! A little baby gull. Pity! Something's
hurt it, but it's alive yet. Makes me feel bad to see any young creetur
suffer; most of all to see a bird. Put it in the crook of your elbow,
Sissy, and fetch it along. I'll take it home with me and see if I can't
save its life."

After a moment he added, seeing her look wistful, as he thought:

"I'd give it to you, Sissy, but towering folks haven't no time nor
chance to tend sick birds. It'll be better off in my house than jogglin'
over railroads and steamboats."

There was sense in this as Dorothy rather reluctantly admitted, for she
would have liked to keep the "coddy-moddy" and made a pet of it. With
Joel, however, it would simply be cured and set free, or it would die in
peace. Also she was touched by the real tenderness with which the
rough-handed teamster made a nest in the straw of his cart and placed
the bird upon it.

He had first deposited the trunks in the baggage-room and there was
nothing to keep him longer; so with another whimsical glance at Melvin,
who had sauntered behind them, he remarked:

"Right this way to the fishin'-grounds! 'Stinks a little but nothin' to
hurt!'"

Then in the fatherly fashion which almost every man she met adopted
toward her, he held out his hand to Dorothy C. and led her back over the
pier and around to the broad field where numbers of men were salting and
piling the haddock and cod they had caught. The fish were piled in
circles or wheel-like heaps, after they were sufficiently dried; and the
fresher ones were spread upon long frames to "cure." It was a great
industry in that locality and one so interesting to Dorothy that she
wanted to linger and watch the toilers despite the decidedly "fishy"
odor which filled the air.

But Joel said that he must leave them then and, after pointing with his
whip to a grassy plain beyond the fishing-grounds, advised:

"Best step right over to the Battery, Sissy, now you're so nigh it. I've
learned in my life