Well, It Wasn't A
Penny, It Was A Florin,' She Says.
"'And little enough, too,' I says.
'What that man said to me, to say
nothing of the bird, was worth a sovereign. But you are a woman, and
can't understand that,' I says. 'No,' she says, 'I can't, and lucky for
you, or we'd 'a' been in the workhouse before now,' she says.
"And that's how I got the bird."
XXIX
A WONDERFUL STORY OF A MACKEREL
The angler is a mighty spinner of yarns, but no sooner does he set
about the telling than I, knowing him of old, and accounting him not an
uncommon but an unconscionable liar, begin (as Bacon hath it) "to droop
and languish." Nor does the languishing end with the story if I am
compelled to sit it out, for in that state I continue for some hours
after. But oh! the difference when someone who is not an angler relates
a fishing adventure! A plain truthful man who never dined at an
anglers' club, nor knows that he who catches, or tries to catch a fish,
must tell you something to astonish and fill you with envy and
admiration. To a person of this description I am all attention, and
however prosaic and even dull the narrative may be, it fills me with
delight, and sends me happy to bed and (still chuckling) to a
refreshing sleep.
Accordingly, when one of the "commercials" in the coffee-room of the
Plymouth Hotel began to tell a wonderful story of a mackerel he once
caught a very long time back, I immediately put down my pen so as to
listen with all my ears.
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