"Come now, Pike, and Hopper too,—if he were here to fly my brook,—I call that very unfair of you. No, it was not you who said it; I can quite believe that. No fisherman reviles his brother. But you should have given him the spike, my friend. Reverend, is this all the theology you teach? Well, there is one answer as to how I knew it, and a very short one—the little word, brains."
Mr. Penniloe smiled a pleasant smile, and simply said, "Ah!" in his accustomed tone, which everybody liked for its sympathy and good faith. But Pike took up his rod, and waved his flies about, and answered very gravely—"It must be something more than that."
"No sir," said the doctor, looking down at him complacently, and giving a little tap to his grizzled forehead; "it was all done here, sir—just a trifling bit of brains."
"But there never can have been such brains before;" replied Pike with an angler's persistence. "Why everybody else was a thousand miles astray, and yet Dr. Gronow hit the mark at once!"
"It is a little humble knack he has, sir. Just a little gift of thinking," the owner of all this wisdom spoke as if he were half-ashamed of it; "from his earliest days it has been so. Nothing whatever to be proud of, and sometimes even a trouble to him, when others require to be set right. But how can one help it, Master Pike? There is the power, and it must be used. Mr. Penniloe will tell you that."
"All knowledge is from above," replied the gentleman thus appealed to; "and beyond all question it is the duty of those who have this precious gift, to employ it for the good of others."
"Young man; there is a moral lesson for you. When wiser people set you right, be thankful and be humble. That has been my practice always, though I have not found many occasions for it."
Pike was evidently much impressed, and looked with reverence at both his elders. "Perhaps then," he said, with a little hesitation and the bright blush of ingenuous youth, "I ought to set Dr. Gronow right in a little mistake he is making."
"If such a thing be possible, of course you should," his tutor replied with a smile of surprise; while the doctor recovered his breath, made a bow, and said, "Sir, will you point out my error?"
"Here it is, sir," quoth Pike, with the certainty of truth overcoming his young diffidence, "this wire-apparatus in your brook—a very clever thing; what is the object of it?"