North Lakes knew we were going clear up to Maine, they'd have a fit, eh? … Well, come on, Brother Ijams—Willis, I mean. Here's your chance! We're a couple of easy marks! Whee! Let me at it! I'm going to buy out the store!"
He gloated on fly-rods and gorgeous rubber hip-boots, on tents with celluloid windows and folding chairs and ice-boxes. He simple-heartedly wanted to buy all of them. It was the Paul whom he was always vaguely protecting who kept him from his drunken desires.
But even Paul lightened when Willis Ijams, a salesman with poetry and diplomacy, discussed flies. "Now, of course, you boys know." he said, "the great scrap is between dry flies and wet flies. Personally, I'm for dry flies. More sporting."
"That's so. Lots more sporting," fulminated Babbitt, who knew very little about flies either wet or dry.
"Now if you'll take my advice, Georgie, you'll stock up well on these pale evening dims, and silver sedges, and red ants. Oh, boy, there's a fly, that red ant!"
"You bet! That's what it is—a fly!" rejoiced Babbitt.
"Yes, sir, that red ant," said Ijams, "is a real honest-to-God fly!"
"Oh, I guess ole Mr. Trout won't come a-hustling when I drop one of those red ants on the water!" asserted Babbitt, and his thick wrists made a rapturous motion of casting.
"Yes, and the landlocked salmon will take it, too," said Ijams, who had never seen a landlocked salmon.
"Salmon! Trout! Say, Paul, can you see Uncle George with his khaki pants on haulin' 'em in, some morning 'bout seven? Whee!"
III
They were on the New York express, incredibly bound for Maine, incredibly without their families. They were free, in a man's world, in the smoking-compartment of the Pullman.
