A faint gleam of intelligence came into that foolish face.
‘I can count,’ said the trout. ‘One—two—four—three—nine and a half—a hundred. There!’
‘You’re quite wrong,’ said David. ‘It goes one—two—six—four. Let me see what does come after four?’ he added, suddenly forgetting how to count himself.
‘Nothing: that’s the end,’ said the trout. ‘You needn’t wait any longer. We’ve both finished. You may get down. Never mind about wiping your mouth or anything.’
‘One—two—six—fourteen,’ began David again, determined to get it right, when suddenly he was blown all sideways, as it were, by a tremendous draught of water, and the trout’s tail whisked by his face. As for the trout itself, that one swish of its tail had carried it ten yards away, and it was drifting back again with an enormous worm hanging out of its mouth. Its cheeks bulged with it, and its eyes stared so that David thought they would drop out. But in two or three gulps it managed to swallow the rest of the worm, and to David’s great surprise it looked almost pleasant and winked at him.
‘There!’ it said. ‘Now you know why I was so busy. I shall have a holiday for three minutes until I’m hungry again. Who are you, and what are you doing here, without being drowned? It’s all very irregular.’
‘I was a Field-Marshal last,’ began David, rather proudly.
‘What a stupid thing to be!’ said the trout, ‘especially as there aren’t any fields here. And who asked you to come to my lake?’
‘Nobody. I chose to come,’ said David.
‘Well, I choose next: I choose that you should go away. I believe you are a sort of caddis-worm, whom nobody likes.’