"What can it be ?" "Fishy smell! So there is." "Did you get any mackerel from the store yesterday ?" "None." "Perhaps Hannah ordered some ?" "No.

I had a ham sent home, and told her to have a slice of that broiled for breakfast." "I don't know what to make of it.

Every now and then that same smell comes up through the register--particularly in the morning.

I'll bet a sixpence there's some old fish tub in the cellar of which she's made kindling." "That may be it," said I.
And, for want of a better reason, we agreed, for the time being, upon that hypothesis.
At the end of another four days, word came up that our best sperm oil, for which we paid a dollar and forty cents a gallon, was out again.
"Impossible!" I ejaculated.
"But it is mum," said Hannah.

"There's not a scrimption left--not so much as the full of a thimble." "You must be mistaken.