“Lots! Don’t you?” replied the little girl.
“Yes. But when we get down on the big ocean the boat will roll more and I’m going to catch some fish.”
“How are you going to catch any fish? You haven’t any pole.”
“You don’t have to use a pole,” explained Bunny. “You just drop your line over the edge of the boat, like this.”
From his pocket he pulled a ball of cord which he unwound. Then from the edge of his blouse he took a pin, which he bent up until it looked like a fishhook. Bunny tied the string to the head of the pin, and then he fastened to the string near the pin a button which he pulled off his knickerbockers.
“Oh, you shouldn’t have pulled off that button!” gasped Sue. “Mother won’t like it!”
“It was almost off, anyhow,” explained Bunny. “It was just hanging by a thread, and it has to be sewed on, anyhow. I’ll give it to mother and let her fix it on again. I had to have something for a weight on my fishline.”
“You can’t catch any fish on a bent-pin hook,” declared Sue. “I tried it in the brook at home, and I never caught any fish—’cept maybe a little, teeny one.”
“I’m not going really to fish with this bent pin,” Bunny said. “I’m just showing you how I’m going to do it when we get on the rolling ocean. Daddy will give me a real hook when we get there. He didn’t want me to keep one in my pocket, for it might stick into me.”
“Fishhooks are terribly sticky,” agreed Sue. “I don’t like ’em much.”