Page:Stories told to a child.djvu/152

 next house. 'No! Then they would not have them.'

'Much too dear,' said a third.

'And not so very curious,' said a fourth; 'but they hoped he had come by them honestly.'

At the fifth house they said, 'O! pooh!' when he exhibited them. 'No, no, they were not quite so silly as to believe there were fish in the world with silver tails; if there had been, they should often have heard of them before.'

At the sixth house they were such a very long time turning over his fish, pinching their tails, bargaining, and discussing them, that he ventured to remonstrate, and request that they would make more haste. Thereupon they said if he did not choose to wait their pleasure, they would not purchase at all. So they shut the door upon him; and as this soured his temper, he spoke rather roughly at the next two houses, and was dismissed at once as a very rude, uncivil person.

But after all, his fish were really great curiosities; and when he had exhibited them all over the town, set them out in all lights, praised their perfections, and taken immense pains to conceal his impatience and ill-temper, he at length contrived to sell them all, and got exactly fourteen shillings for them, and no more. 'Now, I'll tell you what, Tom Turner,' he said to himself, 'in my opinion you've been making a great fool of yourself, and I only hope Sally will not find it out. You was tired of being a workingman, and that man in green has cheated you into doing the Rh