hat an artless young thing I always
was."

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 nibbli