RODS FOR FIVE.

By Sarah Winter Kellogg.

Not birch-rods; fishing-rods. They were going fishing, these five young people, of whom I shall treat "under four heads," as the ministers say,—1, names; 2, ages; 3, appearance; 4, their connection.

1. Their names were John and Elsie Singletree, Puss Leek, Luke Lord, and Jacob Isaac; the last had no surname.

2. John was fifteen and a few months past; Elsie was thirteen and many months past; Puss Leek was fourteen to a day; Luke Lord crowded John so closely, there was small room for superior age to claim precedence, or for the shelter which inferior age makes on certain occasions; Jacob Isaac was "thutteen, gwyne on fou'teen."

3. John Singletree was a dark-eyed, sharp-eyed, wiry, briery boy. Elsie, of the same name, was much like him, being a dark-eyed, sharp-eyed, wiry, briery girl. Her father used to call her Sweet-brier and Sweet-pickle, because, he said, she was sweet but sharp. Puss Leek had long, heavy, blonde hair, that hung almost to her knees when it was free, which it seldom was, for Puss braided it every morning, the first thing,—not loosely, to give it a fat look, hinting of its luxuriance, but just as hard as she could, quite to Elsie's annoyance, who used to say, resentfully, "You're so afraid that somebody'll think that you are vain of your hair." Puss's ears were over large for perfect beauty, and her eyes a trifle too deeply set; but I've half a mind to say that she was a beauty, in spite of these, for, after all, the ears had a generous look, in harmony with the frank, open face, and the shadowed eye was the softest, sweetest blue eye I ever saw. She had been called Puss when a baby, because of her nestling, kitten-like way, and the odd name clung to her. Luke Lord was homely; but he didn't care a bit. He was so jolly and good-natured that everybody liked him, and he liked everybody, and so was happy. He had light hair, very light for fifteen years, and a peculiar teetering gait, which was not unmanly, however. It made people laugh at him, but he didn't care a bit. Jacob Isaac was a "cullud pusson," as he would have said, protesting against the word "negro." "Nigger," he used to say, "is de mos' untolerbulis word neber did year." It was the word he applied to whatever moved his anger or contempt. It was his descriptive epithet for the old hen that flew at him for abducting her traipsing chicken; for the spotted pig that led him that hour's chase; for the goat that butted, and the cow that hooked; and for gray Selim when he stood on his hind legs and let Jacob Isaac over the sleek haunches.

But to return to No. 4. John and Elsie Singletree were brother and sister. Puss Leek was Elsie's boarding-school friend, and her guest. Luke Lord was a neighboring boy invited to join the fishing-party, to honor Puss Leek's birthday, and to help John protect the girls. Jacob Isaac was hired to "g'long" as general waiter, to do things that none of the others wanted to do—to do the drudgery while they did the frolicking.

They were all on horseback,—John riding beside Puss Leek, protecting her; Luke riding beside Elsie, and protecting her; Jacob Isaac riding beside his shadow, and protecting the lunch-basket, carried on the pommel of his saddle.

"I keep thinking about the 'snack,'" said Puss Leek's protector, before they had made a mile of their journey.

"What do you think about it?" asked the protected.

"I keep thinking how good it'll taste. Aunt Calline makes mighty good pound-cake. I do love pound-cake!"

"Like it, you mean, John," said his sister Elsie, looking back over her shoulder.

"I don't mean like," said John. "If there is anything I love better than father and mother, brother and sister, it's pound-cake."

"But there isn't anything," said Puss.

"My kingdom for a slice!" said John, with a tragic air. "I don't believe I can stand it to wait till lunch-time."

"Why, it hasn't been a half-hour since you ate breakfast. Are you hungry?" Elsie said.

"No, I'm not hungry; I'm ha'nted." John pronounced the word with a flatness unwritable. "The pound-cake ha'nts me; the fried chicken ha'nts me; the citron ha'nts me. I see 'em!" John glared at the vacant air as though he saw an apparition. "I taste 'em! I smell 'em! I feel moved to call on him" (here Jacob Isaac was indicated by a backward glance and movement) "to yield the wittles or his life. Look here!" he added, suddenly reining-up his horse and speaking in dead earnest, "let's eat the snack now. Halt!" he cried to the advance couple, "we're going to eat."

"Going to eat?" cried Elsie. "You're not in earnest?"

"Yes, I am. I can't rest. The cake and things ha'nt me."

"Well, do for pity's sake eat something, and get done with it," Elsie said.

"But you must wait for me," John persisted. "I'll have to spread the things out on the grass. I keep thinking how good they'll taste eaten off the grass. There's where the ha'ntin' comes in."

"Did you ever hear anything so ridiculous?" said Elsie to the others. "But I suppose we had better humor him; he wont give us any rest till we do; he's so persistent. When he gets headed one way, he's like a pig." Elsie began to pull at the bridle to bring her horse alongside a stump. "Puss and I can get some flowers during the repast."

"I call this a most peculiar proceeding," said her protector, leaping from his horse, and hastening to help her to "'light."

Jacob Isaac gladly relinquished the lunch-basket, which had begun to make his arm ache, and soon John had the "ha'nting things" spread. Then he sat down Turk-like to eating; the others stood around, amused spectators, while chicken, beaten biscuits, strawberry tart, pound-cake disappeared as though they enjoyed being eaten.

"I believe I'm getting 'ha'nted,' too," said Luke Lord, whose mouth began to water,—the things seemed to taste so good to John.

"Good for you!" John said, cordially. "Come along! Help yourself to a chicken-wing."

"Why, Luke, you aint going to eating!" Elsie said.

"Yes, I am; John's made me hungry."

"Me, too," said Jacob Isaac.

"Of course, you're hungry," said John. "Come along! Hold your two hands."

"Let's go look for sweet-Williams and blue-flags," Puss proposed to Elsie.

"No; if we go away, the boys will eat everything up. Just look at them! Did ever you see such eatists? You boys, stop eating all the lunch."

"Aint you girls getting 'ha'nted?'" Luke asked. "If you don't come soon, there wont be left for you."

"I believe that's so," said Puss confidentially to Elsie. "I reckon we'll have to take our share now, or not at all. We've got to eat in self-defense."

And so it came about that those five ridiculous children sat there, less than a mile on their journey, and less than an hour from their breakfast, and ate, ate, ate, till there was nothing of their lunch left except a half biscuit and a chicken neck. John, fertile in invention, proposed that they should go back home and get something more for dinner; but Puss said everybody would laugh at them, and Elsie thought they wouldn't be able to eat anything more that day, and, if they should be hungry, they could have a fish-fry.

"Aint no use totin' this yere basekit 'long no mawr," Jacob Isaac suggested. "I'll leave it hang in this yere sass'fras saplin'." When it was intimated that it would be needed for the remainder of the lunch, he said there wasn't any "'mainder." "What's lef' needn't pester you-all; I'll jis eat it."

Arrived at the water, the boys baited the hooks, at which the girls gave little shrieks, and hid their eyes, demanding to know of the boys how they would like to be treated as they were treating the worms.

"The poor creatures!" said Puss.

"So helpless!" added Elsie, peeping through her fingers at the boys. "Aren't the hooks ready yet?"

"Yours is," and Luke delivered a rod into her hands.

"And here's yours, Puss," John said. "Drop it in."

Soon there were five rods extended over the water, and five corks were floating which might have told of robbed molasses-jugs and vinegar-jugs, and five young people were laughing, and talking nonsense by the—— How is nonsense estimated? Everybody kept asking everybody else if he had had a bite, and everybody was guilty of giving false alarms. As for Elsie, she shrieked out, "A bite!" at every provocation,—whenever the current bore unusually against her line, when the floating hook dragged bottom or encountered a twig.

"Jupiter!" said John, growing impatient at the idle drifting of his cork. "I can't stand this, Elsie. You girls stop talking. You chatter like magpies; you scare the fish. Girls oughtn't ever to go fishing."

Jacob Isaac snickered, and remarked sotto voce: "He talks hisse'f maw 'n the res' of the ladies."

Elsie did not heed John's attack. Her eye was riveted on her bobbing cork; her cheeks were glowing with excitement; her heart was beating wildly. There was a pulling at her line.

"Keep quiet!" she called. "I've got a bite."

"You would have, if I could get at your arm," said John, who didn't believe she had a bite.

"I have, truly," she said, excitedly. "Look!"

All came tramping, crowding about her.

"I feel him pull," she said, eagerly.

"Well, get him out," said Luke.

"Shall I pull him or jerk him?" Elsie was nearly breathless.

"If I knew about his size, I could tell you," said Luke. "If he's big, give him a dignified pull; if he's a little chap, jerk him; no business to be little."

"Oh! I'm afraid it will hurt him," said Puss.

"Out with him!" said Luke.

"I'm afraid the line will break," said Elsie, all in a quiver.

"No, it wont," said John.

"The rod might snap," said Elsie.

"Here, let me take the rod," John proposed.

"No, no; I'm going to catch the fish myself," Elsie said, in vehement protest.

"Then jerk, sharp and strong," her brother said.

Elsie made ready; steadied her eager brain; planted her feet firmly; braced her muscles by her will; and then, with a shriek, threw up her rod, "as high as the sky," Puss said. There was a fleeting vision of a dripping white-bellied fish going skyward; and then a faint thud was heard.

"She's thrown it a half-mile, or less, in the bushes," said Luke.

"And there's her hook in the top of that tree," said John. "What gumps girls are when you take them out-of-doors!"

All went into the bushes to look for the astonished fish. They looked, and looked, and looked; listened for its beating and flopping against the ground.

After a while, Luke said he thought it must be one of the climbing fish described by Agassiz, and that it had gone up a tree.

"I mos' found it twice't; but it was a frog an' a lizar', 'stead uv the fish," said Jacob Isaac.

To this day, it remains a mystery where Elsie's fish went to.

Jacob Isaac climbed the tree to rescue Elsie's hook and line, while the other boys went down the stream to find a cat-fish hole that they had heard of.

"Don't pull at the line that way," Puss said to the thrasher in the tree-top; "you'll break it. There, the hook is caught on that twig. You must go out on the limb and unhitch it."

"Lim' hangs over the watto," Jacob Isaac said; but he crawled out on it, and reached for the hook.

Then Elsie shrieked, for crashing through the branches came Jacob Isaac, and splashed back-foremost into the water. Then there was confusion. Jacob called to the girls to help him; they called to the boys to help; the boys, ignorant of the accident, shouted back that they were going on to where they could have quiet, and went tramping away. Then Elsie tried to tell Jacob Isaac how to swim, while Puss Leek darted off to where the horses were tethered. She mounted the one she had ridden—a gentle thing, aged eighteen. Then she came crashing through the bushes and brush, clucking and jerking the bridle, dashed down the bank, and plunged into the stream.

"HE KNELT ON THE BANK TO FIX HIS BAIT."

Elsie held her breath at the sight. The water rose to the flanks, but Puss kept her head steady, sat her saddle coolly, and, when Jacob Isaac appeared, put out a resolute hand, and got hold of his jacket,—speaking, meanwhile, a soothing word to the horse, which was now drinking. She got the boy's head above water.

"I'll hold on to you; and you must hold on to the stirrup and to the horse's mane," she said.

Jacob Isaac, without a word, got hold as directed. Puss held on with a good grip, as she had promised, and the careful old horse pawed through the water to the bank—only a few yards distant, by the way.

"Thankee, Miss Puss," is what Jacob Isaac said, as he stretched himself on a log to dry.

"Puss, you're a hero," is what Elsie said, adding immediately: "Those hateful boys! Great protectors they are!"

John had found up-stream a deep hole in the shade of some large trees. Just above it the creek tumbled and foamed over a rocky bed. John said to Luke: "It just empties the fish in here by the basketfuls. All we've got to do is to empty 'em out,"—and he knelt on the bank to fix his bait.

But Luke was not satisfied. "You'll never catch any fish there," said he. "The current's too swift." And off went he, to look for a likelier place.

Yet neither of the boys had better luck than when with the girls, and both soon went back to them. When Elsie's vivid account of the rescue had been given, the boys stared at Puss with a new interest, as though she had undergone some transformation in their brief absence.

Then somebody suggested that they must hurry up and catch something for dinner. So all five dropped hooks into the water, everybody pledged to silence, Fishing was now business; it meant dinner or no dinner.

For some moments, the fishers sat or stood in statuesque silence, eyes on the corks. Then Jacob Isaac showed signs of excitement.

"I's got a fish, show's yer bawn," he called, dancing about on the bank.

"Let me see it," John challenged.

"Aint pulled it out yit," said Jacob Isaac, jumping and capering.

"What's the matter with you? What are you cavorting about in that style for?" John asked.

"Playin' 'im!" answered Jacob Isaac, running backward and forward, and every other way.

"Is that the way they play a fish?" Elsie said, gazing. "I never knew before how they did it."

She went over to where the jubilant fisherman was yet skipping about, and asked if she might play the fish a while.

"Law, Miss Elsie! he'd pull yo' overboa'd! Yo' couldn't hol' 'im no maw 'n nuffin. He's mighty strong; stronges' fish ever did see."

But Elsie teased till Jacob Isaac gave the rod into her hand, when she danced forward and back, chassé-ed, and executed other figures of a quadrille, till Puss Leek came up to play the fish. She wasn't so much like a katydid as Elsie, or so much like a wired jumping-jack as Jacob Isaac. She played the fish so awkwardly that John came up and took the rod from her hand. He had no sooner felt the pull at the line than he began to laugh and "pshaw! pshaw!" and said that all in that party were gumps and geese, except himself and Luke.

"You wouldn't except Luke," Elsie interrupted, "if he wasn't a big boy. You'd call him a gump and a goose, if he was a girl."

"If he was a girl, he would be a gump and a goose," said this saucy John. "This fish," he continued, "which you've been playing, is a piece of brush. Oh! how you did play it! This is the way that Jacob Isaac played it." John jumped and danced and hopped and strutted and plunged, till everybody was screaming with laughter. "And this is the way that Elsie played it." He got hold of his coat-skirts after the manner of an affected girl with her dress; then he hugged the rod to his bosom, and capered, flitted, pranced. Then, having reproduced Puss Leek's "playing," he said, grandly: "I shall now proceed to land this monster of the deep."

"He made a great show of getting ready, and then pulled, pulled, pulled, pulled,—when out and up there came, not the brush everybody was expecting, but a fine, beautiful fish.

You ought to have heard, then, the cheers of those surprised boys and girls! Jacob Isaac danced, turned somersaults, walked on his hands, and for one supreme half-second stood on his head.

"Looks like he was playing a whale or a sea-serpent," said Luke, between his bursts of laughter.

"You're all playing a fool that you've caught," said John, who had joined in the laugh against himself, "and you've a right to."

JOHN AND HIS VELOCIPEDE. 1.—HE GETS A GOOD START, 2.—HAS A FINE RUN DOWN-HILL, 3.—AND COMES TO A SUDDEN STOP.