“I’m going fishing,” the Poet explained, when Mrs. Waring demanded to know what errand was carrying him lakeward. His dislike of railway journeys was well known to all his friends; and no one had ever heard of his going fishing.
“I have asked you to the lake scores of times to visit me, and you have scorned all my invitations. Now that I’ve caught you in the act of going up alone, I demand that you make me the visit you’ve been promising for twenty years.”
“Fishing,” observed the Poet soberly, “is a business that requires the closest attention and strictest privacy. I should be delighted to make that visit at this time, but when I fish I’m an intolerable person—unsociable and churlish; you’d always hate me if I accepted your hospitable shelter when I would a-fishing go.”
“You’ll not find the hotel a particularly tranquil place for literary labor, and the food at my house couldn’t be worse than you’ll get there. I’ve warned you!”
She was frankly curious as to the nature of his errand, and continued to chaff him about his piscatorial ambitions. He gave his humor full rein in adding to her mystification.
“Perhaps,” he finally confessed, “I shall hire a boy to do the fishing for me, while I sit under a tree and boss him.”
“No boy with any spirit would fish for anybody else—no respectable, well-brought-up boy would!”
“There’s where you’re quite mistaken! I expect to find a boy—and a pretty likely young fellow he is, reared on a farm, and all that—I expect to find him ready for business in the morning. Mind you, he didn’t promise to come, but if he’s the youngster I think he is, he’ll be there right side up with care to-morrow morning.”
“I don’t believe I like you so well when you play at being mysterious. This idea, that if you serenely fold your hands and wait—John Burroughs, isn’t it?—your own will come to you, never worked for me. I should never have got anywhere in my life if I had folded my hands and waited.”
“There must always be one who journeys to meet him who waits, and with your superb energy you have done the traveling. I’m playing both parts in this affair just as an experiment. To-day I travel; to-morrow I shall sit on the dock and wait for that boy who’s to do my fishing for me. I’m not prepared for disappointment; I have every confidence that he will arrive in due season. Particularly now that you tell me Marian is already illuminating the landscape!”