"
There were now four of the family who had not been eaten by anyone. It
is extraordinary when you come to think of it that any herring ever
contrives to reach maturity at all. What with the mackerel and the
seagulls and the barristers, everybody seems to be against it.
However, Walter, Rupert and Foch succeeded. Stephanie just missed.
Walter and Rupert and Foch had jolly soft roes, a fact which is
recorded in a cynical little poem by the precocious Foch, believed
to be the only literary work of a whitebait now extant. We have only
space here to quote the opening couplet:--
The herrings with the nice soft rows
Are gentlemen; the rest are does.
The survivors of the family had now to choose a career. From the
beginning it seems to have been recognised that Stephanie at least
would have to be content with a humbler sphere than her more gifted
brothers. She had a hard roe and was rather looked down upon. But she
was an independent little thing and her pride revolted at a life of
subjection at home; so while still a girl she went off on her own and
got mixed up with some pilchards who were just being caught in a net.
Stephanie was caught too and became a sardine. She was carefully oiled
and put in a tin, and she was eaten at a picnic near Hampton Court.
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