Lord! What a beauty!"
He turned to Dannie and shook the shining, slender thing before
his envious eyes.
"Who gets the Black Bass now?" he triumphed in tones of utter conviction.
There is no use in taking time to explain to any fisherman who has
read thus far that Dannie, the patient; Dannie, the long-suffering,
felt abused. How would you feel yourself?
"The Thread Man might have sent twa," was his thought. "The only
decent treatment he got that nicht was frae me, and if I'd let
Jimmy hit him, he'd gone through the wall. But there never is
anything fra me!"
And that was true. There never was.
Aloud he said, "Dinna bother to hunt the steelyards, Mary. We winna
weigh it until he brings it home."
"Yes, and by gum, I'll bring it with this! Look, here is a picture
of a man in a boat, pullin' in a whale with a pole just like this,"
bragged Jimmy.
"Yes," said Dannie. "That's what it's made for. A boat and open
water. If ye are going to fish wi' that thing along the river we'll
have to cut doon all the trees, and that will dry up the water.
That's na for river fishing."
Jimmy was intently studying the book. Mary tried to take the rod
from his hand.
"Let be!" he cried, hanging on. "You'll break it!"
"I guess steel don't break so easy," she said aggrievedly. "I just
wanted to `heft' it."
"Light as a feather," boasted Jimmy. "Fish all day and it won't
tire a man at all. Done--unjoint it and put it in its case, and not
go dragging up everything along the bank like a living stump-puller.
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