"Oh, no! Still, why not? We've all got to come to it, some day, I suppose."
"Not yet, though. It is a sacrifice we can escape for some years yet."
"Yes,—of course,—some years; but we may begin to look about us a bit. I'm, aw, I'm six-and-twenty, you know."
"And I'm very near that. I suppose a fellow can't put off the yoke too long. After thirty chances aren't so good. I don't know, by Jove! but what we ought to begin thinking of it."
"But it is a sacrifice. Society must lose a fellow, though, one time or another. And I don't believe we will ever do better than we can now."
"Hardly, I suspect."
"And we're keeping other fellows away, maybe. It is a shame!"
Thomas ran his line in rapidly, with nothing on the hook.
"Capt'n Hull," he said, gravely, "I had the biggest kind of a fish then, I'm sure; but d'rectly I went to pull him in, Sir, he took and let go."
"Yaäs," muttered the taciturn skipper, "the biggest fish allers falls back inter the warter."