“I begin to think now,” said Sir Mark, as he gazed back at the carp, whose great round golden scales suggested coins, “that I have made a mistake. I might have had fair Mistress Anne.”
The carp glanced down for a moment at the lump of paste, and shook its tail at it, its head being too rigid. The bait was not to its taste, so it rose higher and stared with its great round expressionless eyes, while it gasped with its big thick lips.
“Two hundred pounds for wedding garments of my own,” he said, gazing back at the carp. “Twenty-five pounds for that new sword with the silver ornaments to the hilt, and five pounds for those white crane’s plumes for my hat; and now they are useless. I cannot have them altered to wear now without spoiling them, and unless I marry soon that money is all thrown away.”
He sighed again very softly, for he was exceedingly sorry for himself, as he thought of the founder’s thousands.
“You are a lucky fellow,” he continued, addressing the carp; “you always swim about clad in golden armour, and pay nothing for the show. True, I have not paid for mine, but I suppose that some day I shall be obliged.”
Just then the carp smacked its lips as it thrust its nose above the water, gave its tail a lazy flap, and turned itself endwise so as to face Sir Mark, who gazed full at its fat gasping mouth, puffy eyes, and generally inane expression.
“What becomes of the old Beckleys?” said Sir Mark. “One might fancy that they all went to animate the bodies of the carp in this moat, for yon fish bears a wondrous resemblance to the baronet. I wonder whether he is as well clothed in golden scales. By all that’s holy, here he is.”
For, unnoticed on the soft velvety grass, Sir Thomas Beckley had come slowly up, looking in effect much more like the great carp than might have been considered possible, for his head was so charged with his daughter’s mission that it seemed to force his mouth open, and his eyes from his head, while, as he came close up, he gasped two or three times, opening and shutting his lips without making a sound.
“Fishing, Sir Mark?” he said at last, for want of something better to say. “You have captured one, I suppose?”
“No, Sir Thomas,” said his guest with a sigh. “Faith, an’ I do not care to catch the poor things. I find in angling a change from dwelling on my sad thoughts. You never catch them, I suppose?”