There was a little jealousy as to who should have the old man’s dog, but there was very little need for that, because the collie went from house to house in the Row, arranging his visits with a view to meal-times.

After a while a good Church of England clergyman took up the work that the Primitive had begun.  The fishers did not like the university man, with his dainty accent, quite so well as their rough friend, but they always behaved well to him, and are still a very decent and sober set of people.

THE FISHER’S FRIEND.

A square stone house decked with clambering honeysuckle stood in a lonely place about a mile to the northward of the Row.  A narrow flower garden lay to the right and left of the front, and in spring-time and summer a delicate little lady used to come out and move gracefully about among the flower beds.  She was old, but she carried herself erect, and her cheeks were prettily tinged.  Her dress was in the style of the last century, and she made no change in her fashions from year’s end to year’s end.  On Sundays she walked primly to church, wearing a quaint deep bonnet from which her pretty face peeped archly, She reminded you of some demure chapter in an old-world book.  After she had finished with her flowers in the mornings she would walk through the kitchen garden and thence into her orchard.  Four or five tortoise-shell cats and two sleek spaniels followed her around, and took a dignified interest in her proceedings.  When the lady had visited the cows in the paddock she walked through the dairy and got ready to go out.  When she came out she bore a little basket on her arm, and she went to visit her old women, and her favourite children.  Whenever she stepped into Black Mary’s kitchen that aged dame was sure to be smoking, and the little lady would say, “Now Mary, you’ll shorten your life if you keep on with that bad habit.”  Mary would answer, “Well, well, I’m a long way over seventy now, a day or two won’t make a great deal of difference.”  This joke pleased both parties very much, and it was always followed by the production of enough tobacco to last Mary for a day—­unless the fisher lads chanced to steal some.  After that the cottager’s children had to be seen, and those young persons looked at the basket with interest.  The dainty visitor would say, “Now Jimmy, I saw you pelting the ducks this morning.  How would you like some big cruel man to pelt you?  And I saw you, Frank, wading without ever doubling your trousers up; you will catch cold, and your mother and I will have to give you nasty medicine.”  After this stern reproof some little packets were brought out of the basket and shared with care.