"Isn't he a beauty?"
Yes, he was a beauty, but the boys didn't care to say so more than once or twice, and presently Mel carried his prize off to where his string of trout was floating, and placed it with the rest. But the afternoon's luck seemed to have turned with the taking of the large fish, for during the next hour scarcely a nibble rewarded the patience of the anglers.
"This never'll do," said Clint Parsons at last. "I'm going up the stream a little ways. Don't any of you fellows come."
He set off over the stones on his bare brown feet, with his fishing-rod across his shoulder, turning as he went a merry brown face back toward the group on the old dam.
"I wouldn't sell my fish," said Mel, shaking his line gently, "but Clint is always thinking of money."
"He has to," returned Eb; "his folks are awful poor since his father died, you know. But I like him, though, first-rate."
"So do I. He's smart as chain-lightning, too, and he's always ready to help a fellow when he gets stuck on one of those doubled-up, mixed-up, complex, compounded, connected-by-the-word-'of' fractions."
"And you're the fellow that's always getting stuck," laughed Eb.
Only Mel said nothing, though he frowned slightly as he went on drawing his hook carefully back and forth through the water. In truth, he and the boy who had just disappeared behind a clump of alder were not always on the best of terms. At this moment there were some very bitter thoughts afloat in Mel's mind. It seemed to him that Clint, who had lived in Barham but little more than a year, was surely usurping his own place in the hearts of his boy friends, as he had already done in his classes at school.
Mel spoke at last, beginning to wind up his line. "The fish won't bite here now," said he. "We might as well go down the stream, since Clint has forbid us going up."