In vain had Miss Carrington tried to involve him in plans of her own. Equally in vain had Helen offered suggestions that were practically requests to Kit to do one of several things which would have sufficiently amused her. Kit had one of his most obtuse fits; he met both his aunt and Helen with polite obstinacy and mental deafness.
It ended in his going off to his room and getting himself into his fishing clothes, taking his rod, and starting off to fish the river for a long afternoon of his own unshared companionship.
He was too unused to introspection to know what ailed him; indeed the symptoms were confused and contradictory. He felt at once unhappy and glad; heavily dull and restless; filled with vague expectation that seemed to urge him on, he did not know whither, as if something glorious awaited him just around the corner; yet pain that was almost despair flooded him, as if all the meaning and value were out of life.
“Well, good gracious, I wonder what’s wrong with me! Must be getting sick,” thought Kit as he realized the civil warfare within him. All day long Anne Dallas had been before him, alluring, desirable, close to his mind, yet removed, as if she had died.
“Funny!” thought simple Kit.
Later, his aunt returning from a walk in the woods, might have offered him a solution, if he would admit telepathy as a premise.
He began to find the quiet of fields a balm to his perturbed spirits. The woods, when he came to them and entered them, quieted him still more.
“Why didn’t I bring poor old Sirius? What a brute I am to forget him when he so loves this sort of excursion and gets so few!” Kit reproached himself. “Just the trip for a dog! Well, that’s queer! There’s little Anne’s beagle, Cricket. Wonder if I could persuade him to join me? He’s such a scared beggar! Still, he’s getting reconciled to me. Here, Cricket, Cricket, you bundle!”
Cricket came cautiously in wide loops toward Kit, wagging his body deprecatingly, expressing a hope which he was not convinced had sufficient foundation.
“Flattered, I’m sure, that you trust me to this extent, young misanthrope!” Kit patted the dog with a finger tip, and followed it up with his palm. “Seems to me you act queer, but then you are always such an absurdity that it’s hard telling! I suspect that you came out after rabbits, sir, and are properly ashamed! Though a man with a fishing rod is no moralist to impress you, eh? Well, Cricket, I admit your reasoning.”