“I’ll help you get him in, Dave,” cried Joel, plunging along the bushes where Dave, with a very red face, was struggling to land a heavy weight on his hook. “I’ll get him for you.”
Joel threw aside his fish-pole, the long worm still continuing his exercise, and dashing up, laid his little brown hands next to David’s, and together they pulled so hard that over backward they went, and the fish-hook with an old tangled root hanging to it flew straight up in the air.
“O dear!” exclaimed David in great mortification, as they picked themselves up and began to untangle the root, “there wasn’t any fish at all.”
“P’raps you had one, and he ate off the worm,” said Joel, seeing David’s face.
David turned off to the bushes, leaving Joel to get the old piece of root off. “I don’t need to tell him that I didn’t have a worm on,” he said to himself, and his hands worked nervously.
“I ’most know a fish stole your worm,” Joel kept saying as his hands were busy; “bad old fish!”
David’s cheeks got so hot that he came out of the shelter of the bushes. Could he go home to Mamsie without telling Joel all about it? Without stopping to think, he plunged up to Joel’s side. “I didn’t stick a worm on.”
“Didn’t stick a worm on?” repeated Joel in amazement, dropping fish-hook, tangle of root, and all.
“No,” said David in a miserable little voice. “I didn’t, Joel.” Then he sat down on the grass, and hid his face.
“Hoh!” sniffed Joel, “you can’t fish—any more than—than—a girl.”