“Hallo! Hector; why, I see fish in the pond.”
“True,” replied the young man, “plenty of trout; but they are small.”
“I’ll fish,” said Mr Sudberry.
“So will I,” cried George.
And fish they did for half an hour, at the end of which period they were forcibly torn away from the water-side and made to sit down and eat sandwiches—having caught between them two dozen of trout, the largest of which was about five inches long.
“Why, how did ever the creatures get up into such a lake?” inquired Mr Sudberry, eyeing the trout in surprise: “they could never jump up all the waterfalls that we have passed to-day.”
“I suppose they were born in the lake,” suggested Hector, with a smile.
“Born in it?” murmured Mr Sudberry, pondering the idea; “but the first ones could not have been born in it. How did the first ones get there?”
“The same way as what the first fishes came into the sea, of course,” said Jacky, looking very pompous.
Unfortunately he unintentionally tried to perform that impossible feat which is called swallowing a crumb down the wrong throat, thereby nearly choking himself; and throwing his mother into a flutter of agitation.