Page:Silver Shoal Light.djvu/57

Rh awfully little. Fogger jumped right from the door to the landing in one 'normous jump and fished me out. I couldn't walk very well then," he added.

"Please don't fall in now!" Joan said. "Don't you think we'd better go into the house?"

"Oh, no!" said Garth, who had reached the landing and was leaning over the edge of it. "It's perfickly all right, if a grown-up's with me. I hope all the crabs haven't 'scaped out of here; we put 'em in yesterday." He was pulling vigorously at a wet rope as he spoke. This was fastened to a wire cage which, on being pulled from the water, revealed a horde of tiny crabs, scuttling madly. "Put in your hand," said Garth, "and pick out a nice one; or I will, if you'd rather not. You'd better sit down; you'll get awfully tired standing up that way."

He thrust a baited hook into her hand and flung his own line into the water, nearly following it himself. Joan sat down on the pier. She dared not leave the child alone, and, as she was forced to stay there, fishing seemed to be as good a way of passing the time as any other. She dropped her line into an oncoming wavelet