She looked a little undecided.

“What if I put on my shawl and went with you!” she exclaimed.  “Wait for me down below, Nikolai, so that we don’t go together in the street up here!”

It was a proposal that it was not easy to resist, she was so eager about it.  And then he had been made foreman to-day!

She was not long in putting on her blue-striped dress and a shawl over her head and following him.

They hastened down together; she chattering gaily as in the old days when they had stolen out, he quite taken up with looking at and listening to her.  They walked in the middle of the road, anything but carefully; clouds of dust arose at every step, but Nikolai only saw Silla, dark-eyed, warm and gay in the middle of it all.

Down in the town that warm summer evening, the streets were unusually busy about the fish-place.  There was evidently something that occasioned more life and movement than usual.  The bridge was full of people hanging over the railings and looking down at all those who were pushing their way forwards amid noise, shouts and cries to get a mackerel for their supper.

This greenish-blue, shining fish, so round and strong and quick, sea-built for lightning speed, its head formed for cleaving the water, and an elastic arrow-feather as the termination to an almost dangerously slender tail—­it had already been glittering for two days on the stalls in the fish-market.

Even as late as yesterday morning it was a rarity, and only for the tables of the wealthier, but later in the afternoon another smack came in,—­there had been a large haul out by the Hval Islands—­and to-day two more loaded vessels, so that the market was over-stocked.

Yes, indeed, the mackerel had come—­that is to say, the mackerel that the working-man can buy.  It was to be had now for two-pence or two-pence halfpenny apiece, both on the fish-market and up the river here.  The women, who speculated, carried them in baskets up to all the most out-of-the-way parts of the town.

It found its way now everywhere, where there was only a hole for it to slip into, a kettle or a pan for it to be boiled or fried in—­into all the galleys in the harbour, from the large, superior steamship or full-rigged vessel, down to the cooking-stoves on the timber sloops and the little decked barges, where people were resting, and broiling it in the summer evening, into all the back blocks and small streets from the cellars to the garrets.  Workmen and small tradesmen, husbands and wives were going that sultry evening with one, two, or three in their hand, according to the number of mouths there were at home.  There was a smell of fried and broiled mackerel over whole quarters of the town.

It must be sold, it was so confoundedly hot!

“Yes, indeed, it is a blessed warmth,” answered deaf Mother Andersen, “that sends all this mackerel over the town.”

This fish has had a prejudice to overcome, although in all modesty it has solicited nothing but the favour of being allowed to escape being eaten.  It has the reputation of being the cannibal of the North Sea—­in plain words, a man-eater, and that the dark part of its flesh comes from drowned sailors.