"Oh, they're mostly all alike, a mighty poor outfit all through, from the ones I've known! But I guess they'll manage to fix it up among themselves," laughed Hope.
At this remark Livingston looked oddly at the girl, then the brush crackled near them, followed by the appearance of one of the twins, who, smiling victoriously, held up for inspection a small string of trout.
"And here we've been wasting our time when we might have been fishing instead!" exclaimed Hope, springing up from her mossy couch and minutely examining the string of fish.
"You'll find fishing tackle, all you want, up at camp. William'll show you," remarked Sydney. "For my part I shall stay here and gather strawberry leaves for Miss Louisa to make into wreaths. Isn't this one a daisy? It's too warm to fish, anyway," he concluded.
"You shall not decide for her, Syd," declared Hope. "Which would you rather do, Louisa?"
The German girl shook her head, smiling a little. "It is very warm," she said.
"Then you shall stay with Sydney," decided Hope. "But I am only going to fish a little while, anyway, because I've got something else I want to do." She looked up at Livingston, who had come near her, and laughed. "Yes, you may go with me if you will show me how to cast a fly. Sydney says you are an expert fisherman, but I don't know the first thing about it. We will walk up the creek and fish down, because the boys are fishing down here." She called to the boy, who was walking toward the stream: "I'll be ready to go home in about an hour, wait for me!" He nodded in reply. "Come on," she said to Livingston.
They had fished in silence some minutes, far up the stream at an open point where several other smaller streams joined this, forming a broad group of tiny, gravelly islands.
"I do think," said the girl finally, "that this is great sport, though I cannot haul them out like you do. Now it must be luck—nothing more, for we both have exactly the same kind of flies."
"You leave your fly too long in the water," said the man. "You should cast more—like this."