Ruth’s eyes shone like stars as she watched him in her turn while he sent his own flies spinning across a pool. And now there was nothing to be heard but the sharp whistle of the silk and the rush of the water. It seemed a long time that they had stood there, when suddenly the colonel created a commotion by hooking and hauling forth a trout of meagre proportions. Unheeding Rex’s brutal remarks, he silently inspected his prize dangling at the end of the line. It fell back into the water and darted away gayly upstream, but the colonel was not in the least disconcerted and strolled off after another grasshopper.
“Papa! are you a bait fisherman!” cried his daughter severely.
The colonel dropped his hat guiltily over a lively young cricket, and standing up said “No!” very loud.
It was no use—Ruth had to laugh, and shortly afterward he was seated comfortably on the log again, his line floating with the stream, in his hands a volume with yellow paper covers, the worse for wear, bearing on its back the legend “Calman Levy, Editeur.”
Rex soon struck a good trout and Ruth another, but the first one remained the largest, and finally Gethryn called to the colonel, “If you don’t mind, we’re going on.”
“All right! take care of Daisy. We will meet and lunch at the first bridge.” Then, examining his line and finding the cricket still there, he turned up his coat collar to keep off sunburn, opened his book, and knocked the ashes from his cigar.
“Here,” said Gethryn two hours later, “is the bridge, but no colonel. Are you tired, Ruth? And hungry?”
“Yes, both, but happier than either!”
“Well, that was a big trout, the largest we shall take today, I think.”
They reeled in their dripping lines, and sat down under a tree beside the lunch basket, which a boy from the lodge was guarding.