But where was Master Tom all this while?
Well, you must understand that Mr Thomas Hartshorne, of Her Majesty’s Plungers, was, and had been all the morning, learning the craft of fly-fishing on the banks of the little stream that ran by the bottom of the parsonage, under the apt tuition of the incumbent’s sister. The young reverend himself had long since gone out for his parochial duties, such as enquiring after farmer Giles’ rheumatism, and the widow Blake’s asthma, intending also to do himself the honour of calling on Lady Inskip on his way home, for Pringle had been much struck by the charming Laura the more he saw of her, and wanted to see more still.
It was most surprising what a violent and indefatigable interest that previously indolent young man Tom had taken in the piscatorial art.
He who had before declared Isaac Walton an old humbug, and who had professed his agreement with the dogmatic old doctor Johnson’s assertion, that fishing consisted of “a worm at one end of a rod and a fool at the other,” now used to sally out every morning nearly from The Poplars, with his fishing-tackle on his shoulder down to the parsonage, telling Markworth, whom he used to faintly persuade to accompany him, that it was “the best sport in the world, old fellow.”
He went to the incumbent’s grounds because it was the “finest spot in the county for perch,” and Pringle was “a brother angler, and such a jolly good fellow, you know.” Those were his only reasons, of course!
Hartwood parsonage was the beau ideal of a snug little country lodge; a long, straggling, one-storied cottage form of house, all ingles and corners and slanting roofs, and covered with roses, jessamine, and clematis.
It had low, diamond-paned French windows, opening down to the ground; so that one could walk out into the trim-inclined but wild planted flower garden—Lizzie’s especial pride—and on to the smooth velvetty lawn beyond, that sloped down to the water’s edge, bordered with hanging branches of weeping willows, and sappy, luscious, green osiers, that sprang like ostrich plumes from the quiet pools and crinks into which the stream widened here and there.
The parsonage had a “fine walled-in kitchen garden,” as house agents advertise, devoted to spruce rows of cabbages and arrogant cauliflowers, each of which weighed more than a good-sized Christmas turkey; and fruit-clustered pear and apple and peach trees, all nailed up and trained along the walls, like a giant’s palms spread out with the fingers extended. Beyond the kitchen garden the walls were overhung with rich green ivy, which took off the stuck-up appearance it might have had like most enclosures, and gave the place a much, more picturesque aspect. But it was in the flowery plaisance, marked out on each side by a thick laurel shrubbery, that Lizzie’s handiwork shone out.
This commenced just under the windows of the house, round which it extended, and spread out to where it joined the lawn, from which it was separated by a sort of strawberry island, and a hedge-row of box, tall, up-grown, and cut in queer, fantastic shapes.
In Lizzie’s flower garden, which she had specially looked after since she came to keep house for her brother, there was the most lavish display. Tiger lilies and jonquills, sunflowers and pale-faced narcissi, vied with each other for effect; and the great charm of the whole lay in the utter absence of any set form or arrangement—roses and lilies all grew together in the most charming confusion, with sundry creepers twining around them; it was only on account of there being no weeds visible, that you did not set down this wilderness of flowers to be totally neglected.