The line was cut, close to the mouth of the big fish, which weighed about fifteen pounds, and then Freddie’s prize was taken by the cook down to the galley, or kitchen. A little later the cook brought back Flossie’s rubber doll, cleanly washed, and with the piece of string still tied around its waist.
“Is she hurt?” asked Flossie, for her doll was very real to the little girl, since she often pretended she was alive.
“No, she’s all right—not even a pinhole in her,” said Mr. Bobbsey. “There are a few marks of the teeth of the fish, where it grabbed your rubber doll, but she was swallowed whole, like Jonah and the whale, so no harm was done.”
“I’m glad,” said the little girl, as she cuddled her plaything, so strangely given back to her. “And don’t you dare take her for fish-bait again, Freddie Bobbsey.”
“No, Flossie, I won’t,” he said. “I’ll use real bait after this.”
“But you mustn’t do any more fishing without telling me or your mother,” cautioned Mr. Bobbsey. “You might have been pulled overboard by this one.”
“Oh, no, I couldn’t,” Freddie declared. “Only my head could go through the porthole.”
“Well, don’t do it again,” his father warned him, and the little boy promised that he would not.
The fish was cooked for supper, and very good it was, too. Flossie and Freddie ate some and Flossie pretended to feed her doll a little, though of course the doll didn’t really chew.
“The fish tried to eat you, and now you can eat some of the fish,” Flossie said, with a laugh.