"Oh, PUNCHY!" said the gentle SUSAN, wringing the water out of her flannel skirts, "none of your joking here. Come, take my arm."
Here Mr. P. drew back in apprehension.
"Why, what's the matter?" said SUSAN. "Are you afraid of a little water, and you a man, too? See me! I'm as wet as sop. Don't keep me waiting here, now, or I'll feel like saying "Damn" again, and that sort of thing won't do too often. I want you to come along with me up to LESTER WALLACE'S place—the 'Hut,' you know. I'm stopping with him. It's two or three hours yet before lunch-time, and we can have a good talk."
Just at this minute Mr. PUNCHINELLO saw a sea-gull skimming past, and he said he would like to catch it and give it to LESTER for his menagerie. So he hurried after it.
The next day, Mr. P. went out fishing. He hired a boat, and a man to sail it, and while the man was getting ready to put off, Mr. P. took his seat in the bow and began to fix his lines. He always likes to sit in the bow. The tiller don't knock him so often in the back, and the boom don't bother his head so much. What he particularly wanted was to catch a devil-fish! He thought to himself what a splendid thing it would be to catch one of the big, VICTOR HUGO kind, and to take it home with him to Nassau street! Wouldn't all his editors jump, when they saw him come into the office with that! And he would get STEPHENS to draw it for the paper.
STEPHENS has drawn nearly everything on earth, but Mr. P. did not believe that he ever drew a devil-fish. Not from life, anyway.
As they sailed out to sea, Mr. P.'s heart beat faster, and his brain throbbed with delight as he thought of his great possible triumph.
He fished for two hours and never got a bite. There was too much talking at the stern. Mr. P. looked around, and there were three men there, beside the sailor-man! "Confound it!" thought Mr. P.; "they must have got on while I was fixing my lines, before we started." After this wise reflection, he objurgated the sailor-man, but the latter wanted to know if he wasn't to make any profit out of his stern and his mid-ships, as well as his bow, and he objurgated back with such force that Mr. P. gave him no further attention, but, turning to the interlopers, he said: