“Trout, as I’m a living sinner!” cried Hilary with a fierce delight, as he fetched up suddenly on the brink, and a dozen streaks darted up the stream, like the throw of a threaded shuttle. “My prophetic soul, if I didn’t guess it! But I seem to forget almost everything. Why Miss Lovejoy, Miss Mabel Lovejoy, Mabel Miss Lovejoy (or any other form, insisting on the prefix despotically), have I known you for a century or more, and you never told me there were trout in the brook!”
“Oh, do let me see them; please to show me where,” cried Mabel, coming carefully down the steep, lest her slender feet should slip: “they are such dears, I do assure you. My mother and I are so fond of them. But my father says they are all bones and tail.”
“I will show them to you with the greatest pleasure, only you must do just what I order you. They are very shy things, you know, almost as shy as somebody——”
“Mabel, Mabel, Mab, where are you?” came a loud shout over the crest; and then Gregory’s square shoulders appeared—a most unwelcome spectacle.
“Why, here I am to be sure,” she answered; “where else do you suppose I should be? The people must be looked after, I suppose. And if you won’t do it, of course I must.”
“I don’t see any people to look after here, except indeed—however, you seem to have looked so hard, it has made you quite red in the face, I declare!”
“Now Greg, my boy,” cried Hilary, suddenly coming to the rescue; “I called your sister down here on purpose to tell me what those things in the water are. They look almost like some sort of fish!”
“Why trout, Lorraine! Didn’t you know that? I thought that you were a great fisherman. If you like to have a try at them I can fit you out. Though I don’t suppose you could do much in this weather.”
“Miss Lovejoy, did you ever taste a trout?” Hilary asked this question, as if not a word had yet passed on the subject.
“Oh, yes,” answered Mabel, no less oblivious; “my brother Charles used to catch a good many. They are such a treat to my dear mother, and so good for her constitution. But I don’t think my father appreciates them.”