“Yes, of course,” he grumbled, and he screwed up a rather good-looking young manly face into a grin of annoyance which shewed all his closely set white teeth; “I might have known—all in a tangle. The hook broken, of course!”
He let the butt of the rod which bore a very old-fashioned brass winch, rest in the hollow of his arm, while he carefully extricated the hook at the end of his line from where it had fallen and caught hold of a stem of dwarf bracken, while to free it and the hair, feather, and dubbing which had transformed the said hook into what was supposed to be a big artificial fly, although it was not in the slightest degree like any insect that ever flew, required no little care.
“Humph!” he grunted; “might have been worse. But what a stupid a trout must be to go at a thing like that! Well, so much the better for me. Now then: once more, to begin.”
But the boy seemed in no hurry to start. His exertions, though slight, had made him very hot, and he took off his cap to wipe away the shining drops that covered his sun-tanned forehead and stood thickly where, higher up, the skin was white amongst the thickly set curls of his brown hair.
He looked round at a common-like portion of the New Forest over a slightly undulating stretch of velvety grass, bracken, heather and stunted oak-trees, which gave the place a park-like aspect, running right up to where the oaks were clustered thickly, with an occasional silvery or ruddy barked birch, and made dense with hazel-stubbs and alder.
“Oh, what a jolly day!” he said; “but isn’t it hot!”
It was, for the autumn sun shone down out of a vivid blue sky upon the gloriously green growth which was beginning here and there to look mellow and ripe as if shot with ruddy gold.
“I might just as well lie down and read under the shade of one of the trees,” mused the boy, “for the trout will be all in the most cranky places right under the stones and roots. But one can’t read without a book, and I came out on purpose to catch something, and I mean to do it; so here goes.”
He made for the nearest portion of the forest, and plunged in at once, holding his fly carefully between finger and thumb, and shouldering his rod so that, as he walked on with the trees clustering thicker and thicker, he drew the top after him, and got on fairly well without entangling his line.
Deeper and deeper into the forest, which grew more and more dense, till, breaking away from its level, it suddenly began to descend in a stiff slope, which rose as steeply fifty yards farther on, forming in all a wandering, tangled little valley, at the bottom of which trickled and gurgled a tiny river some few yards wide, flashing brightly in places where the sun passed through the overhanging trees, but for the most part darkly hidden, and only to be approached with some little difficulty and at the risk of being caught and held by one of the briars’ hundred hands.