JUST FISHING
Some days later the Whatnot Shop was being dismantled, that is the
shelves were being treated to a great clearing off, and the
old-fashioned glass cases were being lined with white oilcloth,
preparatory to Miss Manners' Domestic Science Class storing their
samples of food therein.
Gradually Nancy's sense of honor was coming back into its own, for not
only her mother but also her girl friends were constantly reassuring
her.
"There's nothing small nor frivolous about changing one's mind for the
better," they told her. "In fact," said the mother, "that one is willing
to do so, is very often a mark of progress. If we didn't change our
minds how could we grow wiser?"
"But I thought I'd just love business," Nancy complained. "I was crazy
to keep store and now I'm crazy to start something else."
"Which is perfectly normal and entirely reasonable for any healthy young
girl," her mother insisted. "Can you imagine girls being as staid and as
old fashioned as their mothers?"
"Moth-thur!" Nancy sort of moaned, "If ever I could be as _new_
fashioned as my mother I shouldn't mind how old nor how young I might
be. And you are a love not to scold me. I know you are glad to see Manny
so happy setting-up her school, and I know you will be better satisfied
to have her there, facing the fierce public, than allowing me to do so.
Not that I had any trouble with the dear public," Nancy mocked. "And not
that Brother Ted wasn't always within a few miles call if I needed him.
But, at any rate, Mums, I did make some real money, didn't I?" she
cooed, quite birdlike for Nancy.
A clean little, yellow bankbook was offered for evidence by Mrs. Brandon
at this question, for being a business woman, she knew the value of
personal interest in every part of a business undertaking, and so, early
in the experiment, she had brought Nancy into the City Bank and there
attended to the formalities of opening her bank account.
"Mother, you keep the book, please," Nancy begged just now, as Mrs.
Brandon offered it to her. "I know I ought to be very careful and not
forget where I put things, but somehow I do. And I would hate to lose
that precious book," she murmured, touching her mother's cheek with her
lips as she made the appeal.
"Very well, daughter," Mrs. Brandon conceded, "but you simply must learn
to remember, and the way to do that is think of a thing as you do it,"
she advised.
Nancy was, however, already improving in such matters. Being obliged to
find things for herself, instead of calling out to Anna, the maid, as
she had been in the habit of doing, was teaching a lesson that words had
never been able to convey to her.
It now lacked but three days of the opening of the class, and in these
days Nancy and Ted were planning to have a great time fishing,
exploring, and hunting. By "hunting" they meant looking for Indian
relics along the river bank, for Ted insisted there really were such
articles to be found there, if one were only patient enough in the
search.
This was the day set for fishing, and Ted was just now coming up to the
back door with a tin can slung on a string, and that, in turn, was slung
over his shoulder on a pole.
"Got lots of them!" he called out. "Nice fat ones, too. We can catch big
fish with such worms as these," and he set down the outfit to display
his freshly dug bait.
"Well, I'm not going to put them on the hook," protested Nancy. "I don't
mind handling the slippery little things, but I can't murder them.
You'll have to bait my hook, Ted, if you want me to go," she insisted.
"Oh, all right," growled Ted, merely pretending to protest, but really
just showing his boyish contempt for such girlish whims. "I'll put them
on for you. But do hurry, Nan," he urged. "This is a dandy morning to
fish. Hardly any sun at all."
Calling good-bye to Miss Manners, who, even, this early, was at work in
the store, Nancy was soon ready to start off with her brother on the
fishing trip. She was clad in her oldest gingham, and wore her most
battered big straw hat, nevertheless she looked quite picturesque, if
not really pretty even in this rough attire; for Nancy was ever a
striking looking girl.
"Think we ought to take your old express wagon, Ted?" she asked,
jokingly.
"What for?" demanded the boy in surprise.
"To carry them home in," laughed Nancy. But even then Ted didn't see the
joke.
Presently they were trudging along the heavily shaded road that wound in
and out around Bird's Woods until it would stretch along side Oak's
Pond, where the fishing was to be done.
"It's fine to have you come, Nan," remarked the boy, wagging his bare
head and slapping his fish bag against his bare legs. Ted was wearing
old clothes himself, and his trousers had not been trimmed any too
evenly, for one leg ended above the knee and the other leg ended below
the other knee. But he looked about right as a fisher-boy, his cheeks
well tanned, his brown eyes sparkling and his browner hair doing pretty
much as it pleased all over his head.
"I'm mighty glad to come, Ted," Nancy was saying in reply to his gentle
little compliment. "It is great to be off all by ourselves, although, of
course, I have good enough times with the girls," she amended, loyally.
"Me too," added Ted, "I have lots of sport with the fellows but this is
better," he concluded, as Ted would.
Arrived at a spot where the pond dug into a soft green bank, rounding
into a beautiful semi-circular basin, brother and sister there camped.
Ted insisted that Nancy take the choicest seat, a smooth spot on the big
tree that must have been felled years before, and which had found
comfortable quarters on the edge of the jolly little stream. Sympathetic
ferns stretched their soft green fronds along the sides of the naked
wood, as if they wanted to supply the fallen tree with some of the
verdure of which it had been cruelly bereft, and even a gay, flowering
swamp lily, that wonderful flaming flower that holds its chalice above
all other wood blooms, bent just a little toward the one branch of that
tree that still clung to the parent trunk.
Nancy squatted down expectantly. Ted had baited her hook and she was now
casting out her line in the smooth, mysterious stream, clear enough on
the surface, but darker than night beneath. She had removed her "sneaks"
and stockings, so that she might enjoy the freedom of dipping her toes
into the little ripples that played around the log.
"I don't care whether I catch anything or not," she remarked, "it's
lovely just to sit here and fish."
"We'll catch, all right," Ted assured her. "This is a great place for
fish--regular nest of them in under these rocks." He shifted a little on
his perch, which was on a live tree that leaned out of the stream.
Presently Nancy developed a song from the tune she had been humming:
"Singing eyly-eely-ho! Eyly-eely-ho!"
"Got to keep quiet when you fish," Ted interrupted her.
"All right," agreed Nancy affably. "But that tune has been simmering all
day and I just had to let it light up. Say Ted," she began all over
again, "did you hear about your friend, Mr. Sanders, getting rich?"
"Rich? I'm glad of it. He's all right," the boy declared, flipping his
line to a new spot.
"Yep-py, rich," Nancy repeated. "He's living at the hotel."
"Oh, I knew that," scoffed the boy, airily.
"Did you? Then why didn't you tell me?"
"Secret," snapped Ted, shutting his lips with a snap that even a
venturesome fish might have heard.
"And the Townsends--they are quite prosperous too," Nancy pressed
further.
"Ye-ah." Ted was not encouraging the confidence.
For a few moments neither of them spoke again. Then Nancy's line began
to draw, to pull out into a straight line.
"Easy!" whispered Ted. "You've got a bite! Don't yank it. Wait until
he's on, good and tight!"
They waited, breathless. Then Ted, the experienced, gave the signal, and
Nancy, the amateur, drew very gently on her pole. Up, up, but still
under water, until suddenly the water surface freed the capture, and
something black, shiny, snaky, dangled violently from the upheld line!
"Oh, Ted, quick! It's a snake! Look a snake!" cried Nancy, getting to
her feet finally, after slipping several times on the smooth log.
"Look out," yelled Ted, for the black slimy thing dangling on Nancy's
line seemed to be making directly for her face, as it swung back and
forth and darted violently toward the shore.
"Oh-h-h-h-h!" Nancy screamed. "He's going for--" But she was taking no
further chances, instead, she flung her pole, line and hook and catch,
as far from her as a single fling could send it. The pole floated
contentedly but the slimy thing was again hidden in its beloved waters,
although it must have still been impaled upon the tortuous hook.
Ted looked a moment at the lost outfit.
"Nancy," he said gloomily. "You're crazy. That was a fine, fat eel, and
they're hard to catch that way. And look at--your--pole."
"I'll get it," decided the surprised girl, instantly slipping down from
the log and leaning out over the stream.
"Don't!" yelled Ted. But the warning was given too late, for as Nancy
stepped on what seemed to be grass, she found herself thrust into the
water, deep enough to frighten her of something worse than a snake.
"Oh!" she yelled again. "I've got to swim out, I'll smother in the bog
if--I--don't." And so saying she flung her body free from the deep
marsh-grass, and struck out in an emergency stroke toward the open
stream.
"Go up to the cove!" Ted yelled. "Just around that pine tree! I'll meet
you there!"
The light clothing she wore was not much more cumbersome than some
bathing suits are often found to be, so that Nancy, a capable swimmer,
was now pulling surely toward the cove, while Ted was racing, as best he
could in the heavy undergrowth to meet her as she would land.
But just as Nancy turned in to a clear little corner to make her
landing, she heard a muffled call.
"Help! Help!" came the indistinct cry.
Ted was abreast of her and he too heard the call.
"It's over in the sand dunes," he yelled, as Nancy stepped ashore and
shook some of the heavy water from her clothing. "Quick, Nancy, the
fellows went to play Indian there!"