"You've a good mind," said I, disinterring a fine fat worm.
"I have a mind, anyway, and it counsels me not to go fishing with you, Don Michael."
"Argue with it," said I. "It's a reasonable mind, Thusis, and is open to conviction. Prove to it that you ought to go fishing."
"Don Michael, you are ridiculous."
"Let it be a modest lunch," said I, "nourishing and sufficient. But not a feast, Thusis. Don't put in any wreaths of roses, or any tambourines. But you can stick a fry-pan into the basket, with a little lard on the side, and I'll show you how we cook trout in the woods at home."
"In Chile?"
"In the Adirondacks," said I, smiling.
I went on digging and accumulating that popular lure for trout not carried in the fly-books of expert anglers, but known to the neophyte as the "Barn-yard Hackle."
Once I glanced over my shoulder. Thusis was not there. Presently, and adroitly dissembling my anxiety by a carefully camouflaged series of sidelong squints I discovered her near the kitchen-wing of the chalet talking earnestly to Josephine.
And so it happened that, having garnered a sufficiency of Barn-yard hackles, I went to the fountain pool to wash my hands.