“I like him,” said Dexter to himself, as he hurried down the garden, found the place, and for the next ten minutes he was busy fitting up his tackle, watching a boy on the other side of the river the while, as he sat in the meadow beneath a willow-tree fishing away, and every now and then capturing a small gudgeon or roach.
The river was about thirty yards broad at this spot, and as Dexter prepared his tackle and watched the boy opposite, the boy opposite fished and furtively watched Dexter.
He was a dark, snub-nosed boy, shabbily-dressed, and instead of being furnished with a bamboo rod and a new line with glistening float, he had a rough home-made hazel affair in three pieces, spliced together, but fairly elastic; his float was a common quill, and his line of so many hairs pulled out of a horse’s tail, and joined together with a peculiarly fast knot.
Before Dexter was ready the shabby-looking boy on the other side had caught two more silvery roach, and Dexter’s heart beat fast as he at last baited his hook and threw in the line as far as he could.
He was pretty successful in that effort, but his cork float and the shot made a loud splash, while the boy opposite uttered a chuckle.
“He’s laughing at me,” said Dexter to himself; and he tried the experiment of watching his float with one eye and the boy with the other, but the plan did not succeed, and he found himself gazing from one to the other, always hurriedly glancing back from the boy to the float, under the impression that it bobbed.
He knew it all by heart, having many a time drunk in old Dimsted’s words, and he remembered that he could tell what fish was biting by the way the float moved. If it was a bream, it would throw the float up so that it lay flat on the water. If it was a roach, it would give a short quick bob. If it was a perch, it would give a bob, and then a series of sharp quick bobs, the last of which would be right under, while if it was a tench, it would glide slowly away.
But the float did nothing but float, and nothing in the way of bobbing, while the shabby boy on the other side kept on striking, and every now and then hooking a fish.
“Isn’t he lucky!” thought Dexter, and he pulled out his line to find that the bait had gone.
He began busily renewing it in a very nonchalant manner, as he was conscious of the fact that the boy was watching him keenly with critical eyes.