's what the mate of the _Penelope_ told me the other
day."

"They eat them themselves too," said Hilda. "I went inside a cottage one
day, and they were frying some for dinner. The woman gave me a taste,
but it was perfectly horrid, and I couldn't swallow it. I had to rush
outside round the corner and spit it out."

"You disgusting girl!" said Belle, picking her way daintily between the
barrels; "I wonder you could touch it, to begin with! Why, here are the
women coming with the cockles. What a haul they've had! There's old
Biddy at the head of them."

"So she is!" cried Charlie; "her basket looks almost bursting!--Hullo,
Biddy!--

'In Dublin's fair city,
Where girls are so pretty,
There once lived a maiden named Molly Malon
She wheeled a wheelbarrow
Through streets wide and narrow,
Singing, "Cockles and mussels alive, alive-O!"'

Change it into Biddy, and there you are! I've an eye for an 'illigant
colleen' when I see her!"

"Sure, ye're at yer jokes agin, Masther Charlie," laughed Biddy;
"colleen, indade, and me turned sixty only the other day! If it weren't
for the kreel on me back, I'd be afther yez."

"I'd like to see you catch me," cried Charlie, as he jumped on a heap of
barrels, bringing the whole pile with a crash to the ground, greatly to
the wrath of the owner, who expressed his views with so much vigour that
the children judged it discreet to adjourn farther on along the quay.

They strolled past the storehouse, and round the corner to where a
flight of green slimy steps led down to the water. There was an iron
ring here in the sea wall, and tied to it by a short cable was the
jolliest pleasure boat imaginable, newly painted in white and blue, with
her name, the Stormy _Petrel_, in gilt letters on the prow, her sail
furled, and a pair of sculls lying ready along her seats.

"She's a smart craft," said Charlie, reaching down to the painter, and
pulling the boat up to the steps. "I vote we get inside her, and try
what she feels like."

"Will they let us?" asked Isobel.

"We won't ask them," laughed Charlie. "It's all right; we shan't do any
harm. They can turn us out if they want her. Come along." And he held
out his hand.

It was such a tempting proposal that it simply was not in human nature
to resist, and the three little girls hopped briskly into the boat,
Belle and Isobel settling themselves in the bows, and Hilda taking a
seat in the stern.

"It almos