“No, he just started a little while before you came around. But he says he and I will go fishing every day as long as the weather holds good. I’m not much of a hand for fish myself, but I didn’t want to refuse Bill.”
“He has a jolly way with him,” conceded the lad. The wooden-legged sailor stumped up with a tomato can half filled with worms.
“If we have luck like that at fishing,” he remarked as he scraped some mud off his timber-leg on the spade, “well be doing well.”
“I should say so!” laughed Bob. He had marveled at the skill with which Bill used the wooden leg. It served him at spading almost as well as did the foot and leg of a normal person. Bill stood on his good foot, and putting the end of his wooden stump on the top edge of the spade, where it is made wider to give purchase, he pressed the keen, straight, garden implement down in the soft soil. Then, with a quick motion, the spadeful of earth was turned over, and beaten apart with a quick blow, revealing the crawling worms.
“Then you won’t come, Bob?” asked Hiram as he got down his pole from inside the cabin.
“No, thank you—not this time.”
“If you’re passing back this way, later in the day, stop and well give you some fish for your uncle,” promised Hiram. “That is if we catch any.”
“Oh, well catch plenty!” predicted Jolly Bill.
“Thanks,” replied Bob. “I’ll stop if I pass this way. And now, if you like, I’ll run you down to the lake, or river—which are you going to try first?”
“The lake,” decided Hiram, as Bill looked to him to answer this question. “And it’s right kind of you, Bob, to do this. I was going to ask Tom Shan to hitch up and ride us down, but your machine’ll be a lot quicker.”