"Why, Dad!" exclaimed the girl.[109]
Her father and mother looked over their shoulders at her in wooden amazement.
"We are married——" called out their pretty daughter across the sunlit water. "I will tell you all about it when you land your fish. Look sharp, Dad! Mind your reel!"
"Who is that damned rascal?" demanded the Duke.
"My husband, Dad! Don't let him get away!—the fish, I mean. Put the drag on! Check!"
Said his Grace of Pillchester in a voice of mellow thunder:
"If I were not fast to my first tarpon——"
"Reel in!" cried Smith sharply, "reel or you lose him!"
The Duke reeled with all the abandon of a squirrel in a wheel.
"Dearest," said Mrs. John Smith to her petrified mother, "we will see you soon at Verbena. And don't let Dad over-play that fish. He always over-plays a salmon, you know."