E. E. smiled--not at me but right up in the face of that strange gentleman. I declare, I never saw anything so bold in my life! But it was of no use; he came and sat down close to me. In fact, he took the parasol from my hand with a gallant air that made my heart beat like a partridge on a log. In one respect that movement wasn't an advantage: the parasol was not large enough to shade two, and he held it carelessly, as was natural to a dashing, splendid creature like him; but somehow the shade always fell on his side. I felt dreadfully certain that freckles were falling like split peas all over my face. Still he smiled so sweetly and looked so magnificent that, freckles or no freckles, I was ready to give him up my beehive, too, if he had only looked as if he wanted it. Dear me, how that boat did heel up and rock as we went sailing off down to a green grassy point, where the gentleman told me the crabs swarmed like lady-bugs around a full-blown rose--pretty simliar, wasn't it, sisters, and so original? I was dying to know what sort of a fish a crab was, never having seen any in our brooks. Were they like sun-fish, rainbowish and flat; or like trout, sparkled over with dripping jewels; or small and silvery, like shiners and pin-fish? I did not like to ask that magnificent stranger about this, and let him believe that crabbing had been an amusement of my childhood up in the Green Mountains--not that I said so outright--but my idea of discretion is to say nothing of a thing you don't understand, but wait and find out. What is the good of telling the world how much you don't know? Well, I hadn't the least idea what a crab was, but the name made me feel a little rily. The water was full of them; I was pretty sure to find out; so I waited. By and by, Dempster flung a great stone co-slash into the water, and tied us up just below a little green point of land that took the sunshine in its long grass till it seemed full of drifting gold which spread out upon the water in soft, shiny ripples. E. E. shut down her parasol. Mr. Burke shut mine. "Now," says he, "for the lines." With this he took up a lump of raw fish, gave it a swing and a splash into the water, and handed me the other end. Dempster gave another line and a chunk of fish to his wife, and then took one of the hang-bird nets and stood by as if he meant to do business. By and by I felt a sort of hungry nibbling at the end of my line, and gave it a jerk just as if it had been a brook trout, hard to catch. "Oh, goodness!" I just dropped the line and screamed like everything, scared half to death. If ever an innocent female caught a claw-footed imp, I came near doing it then. Why the animal, varmint, double and twisted serpent--I don't know what to call it--clung to the bait till I hauled him clear out of the water, and then fell back with a big sprawl and an awful splash, sinking down again like a great mammoth spider that made the water bubble with disgust.