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"See how the fish rise," she said. "It really is a pity one hasn't a fly-rod." "I was under the impression you once told me that you objected to taking life, except in self-defense or for purposes of commissariat. The trout would almost certainly be muddy. And I am quite unconscious of being exposed to any danger at least from the trout." Miss St. Quentin kept her eyes fixed upon the water.
But that trick of truly logical behavior seems harder to the man than to the child. For example, I climbed up to my den under the eaves last night a sour, black sea-fog lying all about, and the December sleet crackling against the window-panes in order to varnish a certain fly-rod. Now rods ought to be put in order in September, when the fishing closes, or else in April, when it opens.
First and repeatedly there glimmered a gossamer over the stream, falling into the water and as often rising again; then above the film of light flashed another, rising abruptly golden into the sunshine. Not for a moment or two did she discover the flashing thing was a fly-rod, but presently the man who held it appeared below her at a bend of the streamlet.
The ground was covered with palmetto scrub, which Ned examined carefully for rattlesnakes, after which he got out his fly-rod and caught a mess of fish for supper. "Fresh water is all out, Dick," said Ned that night, "so I'll start at daylight and go back to the river and fill up. I'll take it slowly and be here about noon.
Then I rigged up my pocket fly-rod with a gossamer leader and two tiny trout-flies, a Royal Coach-man and a Queen of the Water, and began to cast along the crystal pools and rapids of the larger stream. How merrily the fish rose there, and in the ripples where the brooks ran out into the lake. There were half a dozen different kinds of fish, but I did not know the name of any of them.
Should my innocent babes and my devoted wife be left to perish of starvation while I continued my poetical comparison of the two Williams, Shakspeare and Watson? Inhuman selfishness! Of course it was my plain duty to sacrifice my inclinations, and get my fly-rod, and row away across the bay, with a deceptive appearance of cheerfulness, to catch a basket of trout in
I obtained the boy's consent to admit the partner of my life's joys and two of our children to the secret of the brook, and thereafter, when we visited it, we took the fly-rod with us. If by chance another boat passed us in the estuary, we were never fishing, but only gathering flowers, or going for a picnic, or taking photographs.
But from that day fish was on the bill of fare of the young explorers. When Ned's hand was well enough to be used a little, he began by fishing, sitting in the bow of the canoe, with the fly-rod, while Dick paddled. He caught several of the big-mouthed black bass, often called in the South fresh-water trout, and other small fish which they saved for the pan.
For a whole week a northeast storm blew directly toward the bay, and kept us in camp. It was fishing weather, however, and my fly-rod, with a Parmachenee belle, kept us well supplied with steelheads and speckled trout, which were plentiful in the clear waters of a wandering trout brook running through a meadow below the camp.
Cased, like a shrimp-catcher, up to his hips in water-proof boots, his landing-net, gaff, and fishing-rod, borne on his left shoulder, P , the very picture of impersonated anger, stood before us. Dashing landing-net, gaff, fly-book, and his only fly-rod on the table, regardless of crockery, "A pretty trick you have played me!" he thundered out.
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