“Who did!” cried the boy excitedly.
“Old Dimsted.”
“Yah! That he didn’t. Why, he’s been in the House these ten years—ever since I was quite a little un.”
“Well, I know that,” shouted back Dexter. “He taught me all the same.”
“Why, how came you to know grandfather!” cried the shabby boy.
Dexter ceased pulling at the line, and looked across at his shabbily-dressed questioner. For the first time he glanced down at his well-made clothes, and compared his personal appearance with that of the boy opposite, and in a curiously subtle way he began to awake to the fact that he was growing ashamed of the workhouse, and the people in it.
“Yah! you didn’t know grandfather,” cried the boy mockingly; “and you don’t know how to fish. Grandfather wouldn’t have taught you to chuck a fish up in the tree. You should strike gently, like that.”
He gave the top of his rod a slight, quick twitch, and hooked a good-sized roach. Dexter grinning to see him play it till it was feeble enough to be drawn to the side and lifted out.
“That’s the way grandfather taught me how to fish,” continued the boy, as he took the hook from the captive’s mouth, “I say, what’s your name!”