CONSERVATION AND CONVERSATION
Thusis hooked the first trout. It made a prodigious swirl in the pool and rushed to and fro in the shadowy depths—a slim, frantic phantom lacing the crystalline water with flashes of pallid fire.
She drew in the trout splashing and spattering in all its rainbow glory, and I thankfully thumped it into Nirvana and placed it upon a catafalque of wet green moss in my basket. Thusis looked on calmly while I performed the drudgery of the episode, and I heard her singing carelessly to herself:
"The old gods have gone away;
I follow them with feet astray,
But in my heart I'll faithful be
To Tenedos and Naxos!"
"There seems to be a dryad or two left," said I, looking up over my shoulder where I squatted by the brookside, scrubbing my hands in the under-water gravel.
"You mean me," she nodded absently, loosening and freeing her leader and line.
"I sure do, Thusis."
"You're so funny," she said in the same tranquil, detached voice, as though she were some young chatelaine and I her gillie.
We went on to the next pool where the green crystal water gushed in and spread out calmly through the woodland, reflecting every fern and tree.
The silken whistle of her cast made a pretty whispering sound in the mossy silence, and I watched her where she stood slim and straight as a silvery sapling searching the far still reaches of the water with the tiny tuft of tinseled feathers until the surface of the placid pool was shattered into liquid splinters by the splash of a trout, and her line vibrated and hummed like a taut violin string.