“I’d take what I could get, then. I can catch just as many fish with this pole as I could with a twenty-five dollar one.” Then they talked about what they would do with twenty-five dollars. They all talked at once, their voices insistent and contradictory and impatient, making of unreality a possibility, then a probability, then an incontrovertible fact, as people will when their desires become words.
“I’d buy a horse and wagon,” the second said.
“Yes you would,” the others said.
“I would. I know where I can buy one for twenty-five dollars. I know the man.”
“Who is it?”
“That’s all right who it is. I can buy it for twenty-five dollars.”
“Yah,” the others said, “He dont know any such thing. He’s just talking.”
“Do you think so?” the boy said. They continued to jeer at him, but he said nothing more. He leaned on the rail, looking down at the trout which he had already spent, and suddenly the acrimony, the conflict, was gone from their voices, as if to them too it was as though he had captured the fish and bought his horse and wagon, they too partaking of that adult trait of being convinced of anything by an assumption of silent superiority. I suppose that people, using themselves and each other so much by words, are at least consistent in attributing wisdom to a still tongue, and for a while I could feel the other two seeking swiftly for some means by which to cope with him, to rob him of his horse and wagon.
“You couldnt get twenty-five dollars for that pole,” the first said. “I bet anything you couldnt.”