Mrs. Duncan laughed, and so did Paul; for however ambitious the young gentleman might have been to bear his full share of the burden of the family, it was too evident that his taste for boating and fishing was the dominant motive for absenting himself from school.
"Let me go with you, Paul."
"Mother says you must go to school, and I think you had better be there."
"Who will steer the boat while you skin the fish?" demanded John, who had a proper idea of the value of his services, and was not at all pleased at the thought of having them undervalued.
"I shall try to get along some way without you. I should like to have you go, first rate, John; but I don't think you ought to stay out of school. You will have a vacation next week, and you may go every day then, if you want to."
"You ought to take me with you, Paul," continued John, resorting to the persuasive, now that the argumentative had failed.
"I tell you I should like to have you go with me, if it were not for your school."
John exhausted his store of arguments and persuasions without effect, and then fled to his room to cry over his defeat. Paul sympathized with his brother in his disappointment, but as the head of the family, he could not, on principle, yield the point. Taking his jug of water and his lunch, he left the house and hastened to the beach. The wind was light, as on the preceding day, and it took him nearly two hours to run down to Rock Island, for the old boat was a very heavy sailer even under the most favorable circumstances.
Paul did not feel quite so nervous as on the day before, for he was so confident of success that he did not feel uneasy even when he did not get a bite for quarter of an hour. The perch were accommodating in the main, and did not disappoint him, for at twelve o'clock—as he judged it to be by the height of the tide—he had seven dozen in the boat, and they were still biting as greedily as when he first commenced. He had two lines on board, and he tried the experiment of using them both at the same time, though without much success; for perch are fastidious, and require a great deal of attention. While he was pulling in a fish upon one line, the sly rogues in the brine stole his bait from the other, and he came to the conclusion it was not best to have too many irons in the fire at once.