“Bah! The fish aren’t ex-act-ly jumping out of the water, saying ‘Hullo!’ to you!” it returned in the freakish drawl of a masked battery, shrinking deeper into cover amid the ferns.
Yet, when the Nature students had passed on, one quivering girl, with ears intently on the alert, heard it fire off something in the same fern-cloaked rumble about a certain fly being a “perfect peach” to fish with.
And the answer came in clear, ringing, boyish tones–from another angler presumably–momentarily rainbowing the wood.
“Yes–sure–that Parmachene belle is the girl, Dad! If–if there’s a trout in the stream, she’ll put the ‘come hither!’ on it.”
“Bah! Likening a trout-fly to a girl! So like his ’nickum’ impudence!” Pem’s teeth–in her present mood–came together with a snap. And, of course, she couldn’t see the gnat’s raft when she arrived at the stagnant puddle, for she had borrowed the gnat’s sting with which to barb the snub which she meant to inflict, some time, upon that angling youth who had sat, unabashed, in the Devil’s Chair,–if ever luck held out a chance.
“Yes–yes! and if he had played Jack at a Pinch forty-eleven million times, I’d do it.” Her eyes were flashing now like the sky-dots in the pool, forked by iridescent shadows. “So–so here’s where they have their camp,” craning her neck for a glimpse of a log-cabin amid the spruces. “Stud said it was just across the lake from the girls’!”
After that–well! who could be interested in gnat-boats when they had just lit upon the ambush of a Puzzle; a puzzle that would only open in a pinch and shut up, like a Chinese ring-box, afterwards?
And, moreover, that woodland lurking-place was just a bare mile and a half across the Bowl from the floating barrel pier, decked, as it was built, by girls’ hands, and from the great heart’s-ease bungalow, now, too, in process of decoration for the gala time in the afternoon around the White Birch totem; and for the blissful, far-off event, drawing nearer with every shining moment, the brilliant piazza, dance in the evening!