“Hungry?” said David.
“Not to eat ’em, but to catch ’em. Let’s go fishing, Davy. Now that Livy’s gone and the committee has fled, loaded to the scuppers with asbestos samples and Livy’s pow-wow (had to laugh when he told ’em there was enough Salamander’s wool in sight to ballast a four-track road from here to Ungava), it’s about time we had a little fun. Taking a lot of high-brows fishing isn’t fun, but that was a brilliant idea of yours, that fishing-party. Kept ’em happy. Asbestos! Huh! They spent just one day crawling over the rocks and looking wise while Livy mesmerized ’em, and four days catching trout. But that’s always the way. Take an ‘investigating committee’ into the woods and let some one say ‘fish’ and it’s all off except the sunburn. I’ve got a cramp in my intellect playing bridge and another in my elbow from pulling corks. I didn’t have time to fish, and now I’m going to.”
“All right, Walt. We’ll take a day off. You seem to be in Swickey’s good graces these days—just run up to the camp and ask her to put up a lunch. It’s half-past nine now, and I’ll get the rods. Perhaps she’d like to come, too.”
Bascomb raised an eyebrow.
“Why not?” said David. “We’re not in Boston.”
“Quite correct, Plato. I’ll ask her.”
David went to his cabin and rummaged among his things. “Walt is getting on with Swickey, and I’m glad. The old man seems to have taken a fancy to him, too;—where in the dickens did I put that reel? Oh, here it is!—and she’s changed completely toward him. Talks and jokes—”
“Hello, D-a-v-y!”
He went out and found them waiting on the opposite porch. Bascomb had the wooden lunch-bucket in his hand, and Swickey was evidently cautioning him not to knock the cover off, for he pressed it down and went through a pantomime of carrying it carefully.
“Oh, I say, there you are. Here’s the commissary. Got the ‘rods and reels and traces’?”