“Mussel beds all about here,” explained the young man to his guest.  “That means good feeding for the blackfish.  Can’t catch them anywhere save on a rock bottom, or around old spiles or sunken wrecks.  Better let me rig your line, Miss Grayling.  You’ll need a heavier sinker than that for outside here—­ten ounces at least.  You see, the tug of the undertow is considerable.”

Betty Gallup, looking every whit the “able seaman” now, rigged her own line quickly and opened the bait can.

“Land sakes!” she exclaimed.  “Where’d you get scallop bait this time o’ year, Lawford?  You must be a houn’ dog for smellin’ ’em out.”

“I am,” he laughed.  “I know that tautog will leave mussels for scallop any time.  And we’ll have the eyes of the scallops fried for lunch.  They’re all ready in the cabin.”

The pulpy, fat bodies of the scallop—­a commercial waste—­were difficult to hang upon the short, blunt hooks; but Lawford seemed to have just the knack of it.  He showed Louise how to lower the line to the proper depth, advising: 

“Remember, you’ll only feel a nibble.  The tautog is a shy fish.  He doesn’t swallow hook, line, and sinker like a hungry cod.  You must snap him quick when he takes the hook, for his mouth is small and you must get him instantly—­or not at all.”

Louise found this to be true.  Her hooks were “skinned clean” several times before she managed to get inboard her first fish.

She learned, too, why the tackle for tautog has to be so strong.  Once hooked, the fish darts straight down under rocks or into crevasses, and sulks there.  He comes out of that ambush like a chunk of lead.

The party secured a number of these dainty fish; but to lend variety to the day’s haul they got the anchor up after luncheon and ran down to the channels there to chum for snappers.  Lawford had brought along rods; for to catch the young and gamey bluefish one must use an entirely different rigging from that used for tautog.

Louise admired the rod Lawford himself used.  She knew something about fancy tackle, and this outfit of the young man, she knew, never cost a penny less than a hundred dollars.

“And this sloop, which is his property,” she thought, “is another expensive possession.  I can see where his money goes—­when he has any to spend.  He is absolutely improvident.  Too bad.”

She had to keep reminding herself, it seemed, of Lawford Tapp’s most glaring faults.  Improvidence and a hopeless leaning toward extravagance were certainly unforgivable blemishes in the character of a young man in the position she believed Lawford held.

The sport of chumming for snappers, even if they hooked more of sluggish fluke than of the gamier fish to tempt which the chopped bait is devoted, was so exciting that Betty, sailing the sloop, overlooked a pregnant cloud that streaked up from the horizon almost like a puff of cannon smoke.