“I don't know. Unless it was because to refuse your father's offer and accept a lower one seemed a mean trick, too. And I won't be bullied into selling to anyone. I guess that is it, as much as anything.” “My! how stubborn you must be.” “I don't know why I have preached this sermon to you, Miss Colton, your sympathies in the fight are with your father, naturally.” “Oh, no, they are not.” I almost dropped the rod. “Not--with--” I repeated. “Not altogether. They are with you, just at present. If you had sold--if you had given in to Father, feeling as you do, I should not have any sympathy with you at all. As it is--” “As it is?” I asked eagerly--too eagerly. I should have done better to pretend indifference. “As it is,” she answered, lightly, “I respect you as I would any sincere fighter for a losing cause. And I shall probably feel some sympathy for you after the cause is lost. Excuse my breaking in on your sermon, provided it is not finished, but--I think you have a bite, Mr. Paine.” I had, very much of a bite. The minnow on my hook had been forgotten and allowed to sink to the bottom, and a big pout had swallowed it, along with the hook and a section of line. I dragged the creature out of the water and performed a surgical operation, resulting in the recovery of my tackle. “There!” I exclaimed, in disgust. “I think I have had enough fishing for one day. Suppose we call it off. Unless you would like to try, Miss Colton.” I made the offer by way of a joke. She accepted it instantly. “May I?” she cried, eagerly. “I have been dying to ever since I came. “But--but you will get wet.” “No matter. This is an old suit.” It did not look old to my countrified eyes, but I protested no more. There was a rock a little below where we then were, one of the typical glacial boulders of the Cape--lying just at the edge of the water and projecting out into it. I helped her up on to this rock and baited her hook with shrimp. “Shall I cast for you?” I asked. “No indeed. I can do it, thank you.” She did, and did it well. Moreover, the line had scarcely straightened out in the water when it was savagely jerked, the pole bent into a half-circle, and out of the foaming eddy beneath its tip leaped the biggest bass I had seen that day, or in that pond on any day. “By George!” I exclaimed. “Can you handle him? Shall I--” She did not look at me, but I received my orders, nevertheless. “Please don't! Keep away!” she said sharply. For nearly fifteen minutes she fought that fish, in and out among the pads, keeping the line tight, handling him at least as well as I could have done. I ran for the landing net and, as she brought her captive up beside the rock, reached forward to use it. But she stopped me. “No,” she said, breathlessly, “I want to do this all myself.”