“Twenty-five, I am certain, for he rose several times, and I saw him plain. So did Donald. Oh, what a fish he was! And he bit upon a trout-line! To think that we should have had that one trout-line with us, and he chose it. It could hardly hold him, of course. He required the tenderest management. We gave him every chance.” (Of being killed, poor fish!) “The minute he was hooked, I threw the oars to Donald, who pulled beautifully, humouring him up and down, and you should have seen the dashes he made! He was so strong,—such a big fish!”
“Such a big fish!” echoed Eddie, who stood listening with open mouth and eyes that gradually became as melancholy as his father’s.
“And, as I said, we played him for an hour and five minutes. He was getting quite exhausted, and I had just called to Neil to row close and put the gaff under him, when he came up to the surface,—I declare, just as if he wanted to have a stare at me,—then made a sudden dart, right under the boat. No line could stand that, a trout-line especially.”
“So he got away?”
“Of course he did, with my hook in his mouth, the villain! I dare say he has it there still.”
It did occur to Sunny’s mamma that the fish was fully as uncomfortable as the fisherman, but she durst not suggest this for the world. Evidently, the salmon had conducted himself in a most unwarrantable manner, and was worthy of universal condemnation.
Even after the confusion had a little abated, and the younger children were safely in bed, twenty times during tea he was referred to in the most dejected manner, and his present position angrily speculated upon,—whether he would keep the hook in his mouth for the remainder of his natural life, or succeed in rubbing it off among the weeds at the bottom of the loch.
“To be sure he will, and be just as cheerful as ever, the wretch! Oh, that I had him,—hook and all! For it was one of my very best flies.”
“Papa, if you would let me ‘low’ you in the boat, while you fished, perhaps he might come and bite again to-morrow?”
This deep diplomatic suggestion of Eddie’s did not meet with half the success it deserved. Nobody noticed it except his mother, and she only smiled.