I suppose he thought that it didn't matter if a girl should be lost, but he may have considered that her father was there to seize her if she got jerked in.
She took hold of the line and stood on the edge of the dry sand, ready to pull in the biggest kind of a fish that might come along.

I put on my shoes and stockings, and Rectus his; he'd had enough glory for one day.
Old Menendez wound up his line, too, but that girl saw nothing of all this.

She just kept her eyes and her whole mind centred on her line.

At first, she talked right straight ahead, asking what she should do when it bit; how big we thought it would be; why we didn't have a cork, and fifty other things, but all without turning her head to the right or the left.

Then said her father: "My dear, you mustn't talk; you will frighten the fish.