"I never heard of picking your fish," said Gay.
"Dear me," he commented, "then you have nearly a whole lifetime of delightful study before you!"
He unslung a pair of field-glasses, focussed them, and began to study the surface of the placid lake, not the far-off surface but the surface within twenty or thirty feet. Then he remarked:
"Your flies aren't greatly different from ours. I think we shall find something nearly right. One can never tell. The proclivities of trout and char differ somewhat. I have never taken char."
"You don't think you are after char now, do you?" exclaimed Gay. "Because, if so—this lake contains bass, trout, lake-trout, sunfish, shiners, and bullheads, but no char."
Pritchard smiled a little sadly and blushed. He hated to put people right.
"Your brook-trout," he said, "your salmo fontinalis, isn't a trout at all. He's a char."
Gay put her back into the rowing with some temper. She felt that the Englishman had insulted the greatest of all American institutions. The repartee which sprang to her lips was somewhat feeble.
"If a trout is a char," she said angrily, "then an onion is a fruit."