“No, no, dear, you exaggerate,” said Dinah, with a smile that was piteous. “There! I am going to be as cheerful as can be now, and you shall hear me singing about the place again.”
“Hah! at last!” cried the Major, striking sharply. “Home this time, Di. I believe it’s that big trout with the distorted tail-fin. That’s right, my fine fellow; run, but I think I have you. No more lovely May-flies to be sucked down your capacious gullet. I have you, my tyrant of the waters. I’ll bring him in ten yards lower down, my dear. Mind and get your net well under him, and don’t touch him with the ring.”
There followed five minutes’ playing of the gallant fish, which leaped twice out of the water in its desperate efforts to escape, and then it was gently reeled in and lifted out on the stones.
“Best this season, my dear. A beauty,” said the Major, transferring the speckled beauty to his creel, and preparing for another throw. It was suppertime with the trout in the twilight, and they were feeding eagerly now, as the Major began once more—casting his line, and chatting the while to his child, who stood just beside him on his left.
“They’re pretty busy bringing the machinery over to the mine, I see.”
“Indeed?”
“Yes; and the men told me that Mr What’s-his-name, Reed, is down again.”
Dinah drew a faint breath and exhaled it in something like a sigh.
“Reed—bad name for a man of trust. I say, Dinah, I don’t like that other fellow, that man Sturgess, at all.”
Dinah’s hands grasped the landing-net handle convulsively.