"Trespass on Vassar?" asked Jones.
"I'm going to fish the Caranay, my old and favorite and beloved stream," retorted Ellis, doggedly. "Do you suppose a dinky zinc sign in this forest can stop me? Come on, Jones. I'll show you a trout worth tossing this Caranay Belle to." And he looped on a silver-and-salmon-tinted fly and waded out into the rapids.
Jones lighted his pipe and followed him, giving his views of several matters in a voice pitched above the whispering rush of the ripples:
"That's all very well, Ellis, but suppose we are pinched and fined? A nice place, these forests, for a simple liver to lead a simple life in! Simple life! What? And some of these writers define the 'simple life' as merely a 'state of mind.' That's right, too; I was in a state of mind until I met you, let me tell you! They're perfectly correct; it is a state of mind."
He muttered to himself, casting an anxious eye on the thundercloud which stretched almost to the zenith over the Golden Dome and shadowed Lynx Peak like a pall.
"Rain, too," he commented, wading in Ellis's wake. "There's a most devilish look about that cloud. I wish I were a woodchuck—or a shiner, or an earnest young thing from Vassar. What are we to do if pinched with the goods on us, Ellis?"
The other laughed a disagreeable laugh and splashed forward.
"Because," continued Jones, wiping the spray from his glasses, "the woods yonder may be teeming with these same young things from Vassar. Old 'uns, too—there's a faculty for that Summer School. You can never tell what a member of a ladies' Summer School faculty would do to you. I dare say they might run after you and frisk you for a kiss—out here in the backwoods."
"Do you know anything about this absurd Summer School?" asked Ellis, halting to wait for his companion.