But these reflections were totally forgotten an hour later, when the young Frenchman was standing, in his high leather boots, the water swirling about his legs, casting hopefully over the particular pool in which it was impossible that there should not be a fish.
Maman was right (though he should not tell her so) about the river. It was running so strongly that, as Laurent moved slowly forward, he used considerable caution before he followed one foot by the other, for though he stood in shallow, broken water, there was enough stream to take him off his legs if he trod on a slippery stone or dropped unexpectedly into even a small hole. Nevertheless, it was not really the strength of the stream which prevented M. de Courtomer from immersing himself even to the fifth button of his waistcoat, which was then accounted the maximum depth, but the fact that, after the severe cold which had once followed this exploit, he had promised his mother never to repeat it. Indeed, in wading at all he was doing more than the majority of fishermen ever thought of attempting.
The long, twenty-foot rod bent; he cast again a little farther over the sliding, deeper water near the opposite bank, which there was flat and pebbly, and sprinkled with low shrubs. Yet the deepest part of the channel was below it. . . . No luck, not the ghost of a rise! Perhaps there was a little too much flood, after all, though the water was perfectly clear. Laurent thought he would try a change of fly. He reeled up and caught the line.
But as he was detaching the fly he had been using (rather clumsily, for his fingers were cold) he heard, somewhat to his annoyance, quick steps on the pebbles of the other side. He did not desire a possibly loquacious spectator. Finding, however, after a moment or two, that the owner of the steps did not address him, he glanced up.
A young man—a gentleman—was standing on the opposite bank looking at him. As Laurent raised his head he lifted his hat and said, in fair but obviously foreign English,
"Can you tell me, sir, where I shall find a bridge across this river? I have deceived myself of the road."
M. de Courtomer recognized in the flavour of the accent and the turn of the idiom an undoubted compatriot though at first glance the speaker did not look French, particularly in colouring. As he stood there bareheaded the April sun struck warmly on hair of an unusual bronze tint—a hue that had no real trace of red in it, and yet that was not brown. He was tall, carefully dressed, and had a noticeably graceful and easy carriage of the head, and indeed of his whole person. So much Laurent took in before he replied pleasantly:
"There is no bridge, I regret to say, Monsieur, within less than two miles of here. The nearest is at Oakford."
At his replying in French the stranger seemed surprised, as Laurent had quite expected that he would be. "Monsieur also is French?" he enquired in that tongue.
"I have that privilege," replied M. de Courtomer, smiling.