“Right! I will.”
“You made no excuse to me, make none to him.”
“Right again, you, you—sage.”
Fishpingle pointed to the river. “A trout is rising just beyond that stump. He lies under it, a whopper.”
“Is he? Do you know, Fishpingle, there are moments when sport seems to me a poor substitute for other and more exciting things. You’ve excited me. You have come up from under your stump, and you’re a whopper. And I want to throw my fly over you.”
Fishpingle betrayed slight uneasiness. The young man confronting him with keen sparkling eyes had lost his look of irresolution. His firm chin stuck out aggressively, he spoke with the authority of his father.
“As you please, Master Lionel.”
Lionel hesitated, picking his words, but joyously sensible that his mind had become clear again.
“I suppose,” he began tentatively, “that the truth is just this. I have changed, not you dear people. I used to take certain things and persons for granted, you, for instance. It seemed to me, before I went to India, that you were part of the general scheme, a sort of keystone to the arch. I really thought that you wallowed in being our butler and general factotum.”
“So I do.”