Eddie was washing his hands in my perch pool and I had no idea of getting anything—one is not likely to when he wishes to exhibit himself—but I made a cast with the light tackle with two flies on it and immediately had my hands full. For once, I did actually show off when I undertook to do it. I think the only two big perch in that pool seized those flies, and for the next five or ten minutes they were making my reel sing and giving me such sport as only two big white perch on a light tackle can. I brought them to the net at last and Eddie looked on with hungry, envious eyes.
"You don't mean to say you've been taking those things all day," he said.
"All day, more or less. I merely gave this little exhibition to wind up on."
But of course I had to show him the size of the others, then, and he was appeased to the extent of forgetting most of his troubles in a square meal. That quiet day with the white perch, ending as it did with a grand finale, remains one of my fondest memories.
Chapter Twenty-five
You may pick your place—you may choose your hour—
You may put on your choicest flies;
But never yet was it safe to bet
That a single trout would rise.
Chapter Twenty-five
Back across Tupper Lake and down Sand Brook to the Shelburne. Eddie left the further wilderness with a sigh, for he felt that his chance of getting a moose calf for those museum people was getting slim. A distance—I have forgotten the number of miles—down the Shelburne would bring us to country known to the guides and not remote enough for moose at this season. As Eddie is no longer in this country, I may confess, now, that I was glad.