To this brook we go. We tie Kit at the bridge, Jonathan slings on a fish-basket, to do for both, and I take a box or two for the flowers. But from this moment on our interests are somewhat at variance. The fact is, Jonathan cares a little more about the trout than about the arbutus, while I care a little more about the arbutus than about the trout. His eye is keenly on the brook, mine is, yearningly, on the ragged hillsides that roll up above it.
Jonathan feels this. “There isn’t any for two fields yet—might as well stick to the brook.”
“I know. I thought perhaps I’d go on down and let you fish this part. Then I’d meet you beyond the second fence—”
“Oh, no, that won’t do at all. Why, there’s a rock just below here—down by that wild cherry—where I took out a beauty last year, and left another. I want you to go down and get him.”
“You get him. I don’t mind.”
“Oh, but I mind. Here, I’ve got it all planned: there’s a bit of brush-fishing just below—”
“No brush-fishing for me, please!”
“That’s what I’m saying, if you’ll only give me time. I’ll take that—there are always two or three in there—and when you’ve finished here you can go around me and fish the bend, under the hemlocks, and then the first arbutus is just beside that, and I’ll join you there.”
“Well”—I assent grudgingly—“only, really, I’d be just as happy if you’d fish the whole thing and let me go right on down—”
“No, you wouldn’t. Now, remember to sneak before you get to that rock. Drop in six feet above it and let the current do the [pg 124] rest. They’re awfully shy. I expect you to get at least one there, and two down at the bend.” He trudges off to his brush-fishing and leaves me bound in honor to extract a trout from under that rock. I deposit my boxes in the meadow above it, and “sneak” down. The sneak of a trout fisherman is like no other form of locomotion, and I am convinced that the human frame was not evolved with it in mind. But I resort to it in deference to Jonathan’s prejudices—in deference, also, to the fact that when I do not the trout seldom bite. And Jonathan is so trustfully counting on my getting that trout!