After awhile we begun stoppin’ to bait.  Eb would shut off the engine, run up to a float, haul in a lot of clothesline, and fin’lly pull up an affair that’s a cross between a small crockery crate and an openwork hen-coop.  Next he’d grab a big needle and string a dozen or so of the gooey fish on a cord.  I watched once.  After that I turned my back.  By way of bein’ obligin’, Eb showed me how to roll the flywheel and start the engine.  He said I was a heap stronger in the arms than I looked, and he didn’t mind lettin’ me do it right along.  Friendly old yap, Eb was.  I kept on rollin’ the wheel.

So about three P. M., as we was workin’ our way along the shore, Eb looks up and remarks, “Here’s the Hollister place, Roarin’ Rocks.”

Sure enough there it was, almost like the postcard picture, only not colored quite so vivid.

“Folks are out airin’ themselves too,” he goes on.

They were.  I could see three or four people movin’ about on the veranda; for we wa’n’t more’n half a block away.  First off I spots Aunty.  She’s paradin’ up and down, stiff and stately, and along with her waddles a wide, dumpy female in pink.  And next, all in white, and lookin’ as slim and graceful as an Easter lily, I makes out Vee; also a young gent in white flannels and a striped tennis blazer.  He’s smokin’ a cigarette and swingin’ a racket jaunty.  I could even hear Vee’s laugh ripple out across the water.  You remember how she put it too, “nice, but awfully stupid.”  Seems she was makin’ the best of it, though.

And here I was, in Ira’s baggy oilskins, my feet in six inches of oily brine, squattin’ on the edge of a smelly fish box tryin’ to hold down a piece of custard pie!  No, that wa’n’t exactly the rosy picture I threw on the screen back in the Corrugated gen’ral offices only yesterday.  Nothing like that!  I don’t do any hoo-hooin’, or wave any private signals.  I pulls the sticky sou’wester further down over my eyes and squats lower in the boat.

“Look kind o’ gay and festive, don’t they?” says Eb, straightenin’ up and wipin’ his hands on his corduroys.

“Who’s the party in the tennis outfit?” says I.

“Him?” says Eb, gawpin’ ashore.  “Must be young Hollister, that owns the mahogany speed boat.  Stuck up young dude, I guess.  Wall, five more traps to haul, and we’re through, Son.”

“Let’s go haul ’em, then,” says I, grabbin’ the flywheel.

Great excursion, that was!  Once more on land, I sneaked soggy footed up to the hotel and piked for my room.  I shied supper and went to the feathers early, trustin’ that if I could get stretched out level with my eyes shut things would stop wavin’ and bobbin’ around.  That was good dope too.

I rolled out next mornin’ feelin’ fine and silky; but not so cocky by half.  Somehow, I wa’n’t gettin’ any of the lucky breaks I’d looked for.