“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.”