Willie and I interpreted the clamor somewhat as follows:--
"I am going to take my foot off. Are you ready to put yours on? Don't be clumsy! Wait a minute, I'm not ready. _I'm not ready, I tell you!_ NOW!!"
"Your egg is so close to mine that I can't breathe"--
"Move your egg, then, I can't move mine!"
"You're sitting so close, I can't stretch my wings."
"Neither can I. You've got as much room as I have."
"Go ahead and tumble, then! There is plenty of room in the sea."
[_From one father to another, ceremoniously._]
"Pardon me, but I am afraid I shoved your wife off the rock last night."
"Don't mention it. I remember I shoved off your wife's mother last year."
We walked among the tiny whitewashed low-roofed cots, each with its silver-skinned fishes tacked invitingly against the door-frame to dry, until we came to my favorite, the corner cottage in the row. It has beautiful narrow garden strips in front,--solid patches of color in sweet gillyflower bushes, from which the kindly housewife plucked a nosegay for us. Her white columbines she calls "granny's mutches;" and indeed they are not unlike those fresh white caps. Dear Robbie Burns, ten inches high in plaster, stands in the sunny window in a tiny box of blossoming plants surrounded by a miniature green picket fence. Outside, looming white among the gillyflowers, is Sir Walter, and near him is still another and a larger bust on a cracked pedestal a foot high, perhaps. We did not recognize the head at once, and asked the little woman who it was.
"Homer, the graund Greek poet," she answered cheerily; "an' I'm to have anither o' Burns, as tall as Homer, when my daughter comes hame frae E'nbro'."
If the shade of Homer keeps account of his earthly triumphs, I think he is proud of his place in that humble Scotchwoman's gillyflower garden, with his head under the drooping petals of granny's white mutches.
What do you think her "mon" is called in the village? John o' Mary! But he is not alone in his meekness, for there are Jock o' Meg, Willie o' Janet, Jem o' Tibby, and a dozen others. These primitive fishing-villages are the places where all the advanced women ought to congregate, for the wife is head of the house; the accountant, the treasurer, the auditor, the chancellor of the exchequer; and though her husband does catch the fish for her to sell, that is accounted apparently as a detail too trivial for notice.