“We don’t try to entertain one another here, but everybody seems to have a perfectly good time. The main thing is that we all feel quite free at Foreland. You’ll lose yourself indoors at first. The family for a hundred years has been adding these absurd two-story wings, so that the house wanders at random over the landscape, and you may have to inquire your way about in the beginning.”
She smiled again at Dulcie and took her hand in both of hers:
“I’m sure you will like the Farms,” she said, linking her other arm through her son’s. “I’m rather wet, Garry,” she added, “but I think Lee and I had better dry out in the saddle.” And to Dulcie again: “Tea at five, if anybody wishes it. Would you like to see your room?”
Thessalie, conversing with Lee, turned smilingly to be included in the suggestion; and the maid came forward to conduct her and Dulcie through the intricacies of the big, casual, sprawling house, where rooms and corridors and halls rambled unexpectedly and irrelevantly 295 in every direction, and one vista seemed to terminate in another.
When they had disappeared, the Barres family turned to inspect its son and heir with habitual and humorous insouciance, commenting frankly upon his personal appearance and concluding that his health still remained all that could be desired by the most solicitous of parents and sisters.
“There are rods already rigged up in the work-room,” remarked his father, “if you and your guests care to try a dry-fly this evening. As for me, you’ll find me somewhere around the upper lake, if you care to look for me——”
He fished out of his pocket a bewildering tangle of fine mist-leaders, and, leisurely disentangling them, strolled toward the porch, still talking:
“There’s only one fly they deign to notice, now—a dust-coloured midge tied in reverse with no hackle, no tinsel, a May-fly tail, and barred canary wing——” He nodded wisely over his shoulder at his son and Westmore, as though sharing with them a delightful secret of world-wide importance, and continued on toward the porch, serenely interested in his tangled leaders.
Garret glanced at his mother and sister; they both laughed. He said:
“Dad is one of those rarest of modern beings, a genuine angler of the old school. After all the myriad trout and salmon he has caught in a career devoted to fishing, the next fish he catches gives him just as fine a thrill as did the very first one he ever hooked! It’s quite wonderful, isn’t it, mother?”