ey don't expect me. When I thought I was going to be sick, I
telephoned the office, and they said all right, that they didn't need
me. Now I've got eleven dollars, and there are three holidays of
perfect weather before us: to-day, to-morrow, and Monday. What will we
do? What must we do to be saved? Our matrimonial objects don't
materialize till Monday night. In the meanwhile, what? Shall we go
down to Chinatown--to the restaurant, or to the water-front again?
Maybe the mate on the whaleback would invite us to lunch. Or," added
Condy, his eye caught by a fresh-fish peddler who had just turned into
the street, "we can go fishing."

"For oysters, perhaps."

But the idea had caught Condy's fancy.

"Blix!" he exclaimed, "let's go fishing."

"Where?"

"I don't know. Where DO people fish around here? Where there's water,
I presume."

"No, is it possible?" she asked with deep concern. "I thought they
fished in their back yards, or in their front parlors perhaps."

"Oh, you be quiet! you're all the time guying me," he answered. "Let
me think--let me think," he went on, frowning heavily, scouring at his
hair. Suddenly he slapped a thigh.

"Come on," he cried, "I've an idea!" He was already half-way down the
steps, when Blix called him back.

"Leave it all to me," he assured her; "trust me IMPLICITLY. Don't you
want to go?" he demanded with abrupt disappointment.

"Want to!" she exclaimed. "Why, it would be the very best kind of fun,
but--"

"Well, then, come along."

They took a downtown car.

"I've got a couple of split bamboo rods," he explained as the car slid
down the terrific grade of the Washington-Street hill. "I haven't used
'em in years--not since we lived East; but they're hand-made, and are
tip-top. I haven't any other kind of tackle; but it's just as well,
because the tackle will all depend upon where we are going to fish."

"Where's that?"

"Don't know yet; am going down now to find out."

He took her down to the principal dealer in sporting goods on Market
Street. It was a delicious world, whose atmosphere and charm were not
to be resisted. There were shot-guns in rows, their gray barrels
looking like so many organ-pipes; sheaves of fishing-rods, from the
four-ounce whisp of the brook-trout up to the rigid eighteen-ounce
lance of the king-salmon and sea-bass; showcases of wicked revolvers,
swelling by calibres into the thirty-eight and forty-four man-killers
of the plainsmen and