“By my faith, Master Juxon, you are bewitched; but whether by old Margery or by the sparkling eyes of Jane I say not; by Margery, methinks; for the faint heart of an angler will never win such a sprightly lady of the woods as our Jane.”
“Nay, nay, Sir Oliver, when a man is bewitched, and by love, too, as Mistress Jane will have it, his thoughts must be too roving and unquiet to sit still upon a mossy bank watching for the trembling of a quill.”
“Ay, ay; but he may sit quiet enough, and not watch any thing but his own fancies. I do verily think that thou must be touched with some strange care, to let thy brave gelding race it round his pasture for the madness of his desire to follow the chase, at sound of which he neigheth for his rider, and thou sitting the while like some poor scholar alone upon a tree stump.”
“At the least I find one blessing rests on anglers—where they walk, the grace of humility doth grow, lowly as the daisy, and plentiful as the meadow sweet.”
“I think,” said Katharine, “that Master Juxon has good right to walk the valley with his rod, without being thus rated for his pleasure; and if he useth to find good thoughts in all he meeteth by the river side in summer evenings it is more than hunters do in the forest.”
“Marry, Kate, it is to get rid of thought that men go a-hunting. I tell thee that cares and sorrows, and wrongs and vexations, cannot keep pace with a bold hunter; self is forgotten; all is life, and joy, and wild delight. Troth I have lost mind and heart since the merry days when I hunted.”
“I am of thy mind, Sir Oliver,” said Juxon, “and the falling leaf of October, and the chill gloom of November skies, can never cloud the heart of a hunter; but when woods are green, and sunbeams warm, and birds are singing, methinks the yelp of a hound is unseasonable music.”
“Well,” said Jane, “all I know is, that you seldom missed an afternoon last summer; and if it was an early hunting day and a stag turned out in the morning, in spite of the green trees and the warbling larks, Master Juxon was never last in the field; but I will rate you no more: for, may-be, you are afraid of the Puritans, and do study Master Stubbes’s Anatomie of Abuses, and will give up the wicked ways of Esau, and turn shepherd—gentle shepherd, shall it be, or good?”
“Lady,” said Juxon, gravely, “there are good men among the Puritans;” and seeing her colour a little at his tone, he added, with a smile, “and good anglers too; but, in truth, you have hit me hard: for there are good men, who are no Puritans, who think that the sport of hunting is not seemly in a parson, especially in times like these.”
“Puritans or no Puritans,” said Sir Oliver, “I hope you don’t mind the muddy race that croak these black lessons of duty. I do not know whether they be fools or knaves; but they would preach us into walking tomb-stones, each showing its memento mori.”