Page:Bill the minder.djvu/116

 GOOD AUNT GALLADIA kernel. Before baiting my hook with this, I dipped it into the fluid in which the old wooden kernel was still soaking, whence it received a very very faint suggestion of the original flavour, but so faint was this that it had to be redipped three times a day. This went on for some time, until the precious liquor began to run low, and I was compelled to dilute it still further, in the proportion of about five drops to a mussel-shellful of water, into which the wooden kernel was now dipped ten or twelve times a day.

'Well, I had been at this game, I should say, getting on for twenty years, and now resolved to have done with it, after risking all on one throw. So I dropped my wooden kernel, all rotted and weather-beaten as it was, into what little there remained over of the pure liquor, this time without diluting it at all, and then let it stew all day in the sun.

'In the evening the liquor was all evaporated, and the wooden bean seemed to the taste as though it possibly might have been in the vicinity of a real one some time before. On that evening, for the last time, I baited my hook and slept soundly at the foot of the pole.

'I was awakened next morning by the wind that had arisen during the night, and a great wrenching noise, as it tore my poor old angling-pole from its place in the sand, and carried it out to sea.

'"That settles it once and for all," thought I, much relieved, "and I'm off home," and I set about getting 76