“Yes, I loved her, love her still. But that was different,” said Leonard. “I could never have talked to her as to you: to you I open my whole heart; you are my little Muse, Helen: I confess to you my wild whims and fancies as frankly as if I were writing poetry.” As he said this, a step was heard, and a shadow fell over the stream. A belated angler appeared on the margin, drawing his line impatiently across the water, as if to worry some dozing fish into a bite before it finally settled itself for the night. Absorbed in his occupation, the angler did not observe the young persons on the sward under the tree, and he halted there, close upon them.
“Curse that perch!” said he, aloud.
“Take care, sir,” cried Leonard; for the man, in stepping back, nearly trod upon Helen.
The angler turned. “What ‘s the matter? Hist! you have frightened my perch. Keep still, can’t you?”
Helen drew herself out of the way, and Leonard remained motionless. He remembered Jackeymo, and felt a sympathy for the angler.
“It is the most extraordinary perch, that!” muttered the stranger, soliloquizing. “It has the devil’s own luck. It must have been born with a silver spoon in its mouth, that damned perch! I shall never catch it,—never! Ha! no, only a weed. I give it up.” With this, he indignantly jerked his rod from the water and began to disjoint it. While leisurely engaged in this occupation, he turned to Leonard.
“Humph! are you intimately acquainted with this stream, sir?”
“No,” answered Leonard. “I never saw it before.”
ANGLER, (solemnly).—“Then, young man, take my advice, and do not give way to its fascinations. Sir, I am a martyr to this stream; it has been the Delilah of my existence.”
LEONARD (interested, the last sentence seemed to him poetical).—“The Delilah! sir, the Delilah!”