“Yes. It will please him, too. Now let’s go back to the creek, and start our trouting.”
But Polly hesitated.
“I wish I could send the Doctor just a little piece of the bone, so he’d know for sure.”
“Send him some of the rock around it, and just a splinter,” suggested Ruth.
It was hard knocking pieces off, but they finally got a small bit of the blue shale, and a piece of the smaller bone, only a splinter, but enough to show an expert eye what was there.
Then back they climbed down the steep walls into the gulch again, and rested for a while in the cabin, as it had been a long and tiresome climb through the underbrush, and over the high rocks. Polly took a pail, and went after water, clear and cold from the spring they could hear falling back of the cabin. Old Zed had chosen his home site with an eye to comfort and convenience. After a good rest, and something to eat from the lunch basket, they started out to try their luck for the first time as trouters.
Peggie was chief instructor now, and enjoyed her office thoroughly. She showed the girls how to select their flies from the store Don had put in the baskets for them.
“I heard him talking about the flies, and I thought he meant real ones for bait,” said Isabel soberly, as she adjusted a neat little red snapper of a fly. “I haven’t as much respect for trout as I had if they’re taken in by these things.”
“You’ll respect them when you eat them,” said Peggie. “Come ’way out on the rocks the way I do, just as far as you can. Why don’t you take off your shoes and stockings, Polly? You may get a wetting before we’re through. I always do. Sue, don’t stand still. You have to troll, and move up-stream. Look at me.”
The girls watched her as she cast in, and played the fly lightly, choosing the best spots, and making her way from rock to rock up-stream slowly. Pretty soon they were deep into the delicious art of trolling, and each one at once developed individual taste in the proper way to catch trout. Polly was a regular gamester, like Peggie. With Ted following her, she chose the sun-dappled spots where the water was rather quiet, to cast in. Finally, Jean drew out the first trout, and they all went back to take a look at it, for, as Ruth said, in her dry way, it was a good idea always to know what you were fishing for, and how it looked.