“I got another one,” he shouted.  And Chad fished silently.  They were making “a mighty big fuss,” he thought, “over mighty little fish.”  If he just had a minnow an’ had ’em down in the mountains, “I Gonnies, he’d show’em what fishin’ was!” But he began to have good luck as it was.  Perch after perch he pulled out quietly, and he kept Snowball busy stringing them until he had five on the string.  The boy on the rock was watching him and so was the boy near him—­furtively—­while Snowball’s admiration was won completely, and he grinned and gurgled his delight, until Dan lost his temper again and spoke to him sharply.  Dan did not like to be beaten at anything.  Pretty soon there was a light thunder of hoofs on the turf above the bank.  A black pony shot around the bank and was pulled in at the edge of the ford, and Chad was looking into the dancing black eyes of a little girl with a black velvet cap on her dark curls and a white plume waving from it.

“Howdye!” said Chad, and his heart leaped curiously, but the little girl did not answer.  She, too, stared at him as all the others had done and started to ride into the creek, but Dan stopped her sharply: 

“Now, Margaret, don’t you ride into that water.  You’ll skeer the fish.”

“No, you won’t,” said Chad, promptly.  “Fish don’t keer nothin’ about a hoss.”  But the little girl stood still, and her brother’s face flushed.  He resented the stranger’s interference and his assumption of a better knowledge of fish.

“Mind your own business,” trembled on his tongue, and the fact that he held the words back only served to increase his ill-humor and make a worse outbreak possible.  But, if Chad did not understand, Snowball did, and his black face grew suddenly grave as he sprang more alertly than ever at any word from his little master.  Meanwhile, all unconscious, Chad fished on, catching perch after perch, but he could not keep his eyes on his cork while the little girl was so near, and more than once he was warned by a suppressed cry from the pickaninny when to pull.  Once, when he was putting on a worm, he saw the little girl watching the process with great disgust, and he remembered that Melissa would never bait her own hook.  All girls were alike, he “reckoned” to himself, and when he caught a fish that was unusually big, he walked over to her.

“I’ll give this un to you,” he said, but she shrank from it.

“Go ’way!” she said, and she turned her pony.  Dan was red in the face by this time.  How did this piece of poor white trash dare to offer a fish to his sister.  And this time the words came out like the crack of a whip: 

“S’pose you mind your own business!”

Chad started as though he had been struck and looked around quickly.  He said nothing, but he stuck the butt of his pole in the mud at once and climbed up on the bank again and sat there, with his legs hanging over; and his own face was not pleasant to see.  The little girl was riding at a walk up the road.  Chad kept perfect silence, for he realized that he had not been minding his own business; still he did not like to be told so and in such a way.  Both corks were shaking at the same time now.