Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/255

 the hook, threw the line across the track, and waited for a bite. Soon he got deeply interested in the line, jerked it once or twice, and drew it in rapidly. The bait had been rubbed off in the grass. The old man regarded the hook disgustedly.

'Look at that!' he cried, 'I had him, only I was in such a hurry. I should ha' played him a little more.'

Next time he was more careful, he drew the line in warily, grabbed an imaginary fish and laid it down on the grass. Sunlight and Co. were greatly interested by this time.

'Wot yer think o' that?' asked Rats. 'It weighs thirty pound if it weighs an ounce! Wot yer think o' that for a cod? The hook's half-way down his blessed gullet?'

He caught several cod and a bream while they were there, and invited them to camp and have tea with him. But they wished to reach a certain shed next day, so―after the ancient had borrowed about a pound of meat for bait they went on, and left him fishing contentedly.

But first Sunlight went down into his pocket and came up with half-a-crown, which he gave to the old man, along with some tucker. 'You'd best push on to the water before dark, old chap,' he said, kindly.

When they turned their heads again, Rats was still fishing: but when they looked back for the last time before entering the timber, he was having another row with his swag; and Sunlight reckoned that the trouble arose out of some lies which the swag had been telling about the bigger fish it caught.