Page:Minnie's Bishop and Other Stories (1915).djvu/58

 eight or ten girls, barefooted, bareheaded, and bare-armed. Each of them had a tin can. They were gathering periwinkles among the pools. I could hear their voices as they shouted to each other. I bore slowly down on them and then, hauling my wind, circled round the outer side of the reef. I recognised Onnie Dever, most eager picker of all of them—busiest gathering the periwinkles; busiest at shouting jests; readiest with her laughter.

I drew past the reef and sailed away reflecting on the fate of the periwinkles. Dragged from their cool and pleasant homes they would be measured out in pints and quarts, paid for by the man who bought them with sixpences and shillings, which would go to buy ribbons for Onnie and her friends. Then, boiled and packed in huge cases, they would go to Manchester and to Warrington—to any of the group of smoke-grimed Lancashire towns where cotton is spun. There they would be piled in street barrows, with green labels stuck on them, and sold to pallid women to be eaten as a relish—picked from their shells with a pin and poised on slices of bread and margarine.

It seemed a far cry from our sunny bay to the flare-lit market-place of Bolton on a Saturday night—a great change from the sound of the laughter of merry girls to the raucous cries of the vendors. Such, I reflected, are the tricks that fate plays with us in life. As is the periwinkle so is the man—a card in a pack shuffled by a sportive destiny.