"Oh yes! And sport?"
"Well, you see, I come here every year for fishing."
For some moments the lady maintained an ominous silence, whilst her eyes focussed the horizon of some distant islands lying far out upon the smooth and sunlit sea. She smiled to herself, as though she had caught a delusive object of great worth; then, turning her fair head—and she really was pretty—so that she could look me full in the eyes, she asked:
"Is it your business or your sport which gives you so much fascination for the sea?"
"Fascination for the sea?" I exclaimed doubtingly. "Now, weally you are quite wrong. I never go on the sea unless I'm weally forced to do so. In fact, I hate it. It's so beastly wrestless when it might be quiet and let everybody else be quiet too." I lisped painfully.
"I think you said it was herrings that interested you," she replied, following up a point she seemed determined to push home. "Are you sure it's not a larger species of fish?"
"Yes, quite sure," I hastened to add. "I have no interwests in your extensive cod fisherwies; nor in the oil which I am told is such good business."
"I did not mean codfish," she said. "I meant a much larger sort of fish—a big fish closely related to the whale family!" Whilst as she uttered the sentence her bright eyes looked laughingly at me with a keen glance that seemed to wish it could penetrate my very soul.
"Whales! Whales! I've never touched a whaling share in my life, and I'm quite certain I don't mean to in these times," I muttered.
Again the lady favoured silence, but her eyes never left my face a second. She studied every line, every flicker of the eyelid or twitch of the mouth, to try and read what thoughts were passing through my brain; but fortunately for me an assumed innocent expression of countenance successfully concealed the tumult within.