She turned, looking at me very sadly.
“Yes, if you do not mind.”
I shrugged my shoulders, and after another sad, reproachful look, she left the room. A minute afterwards, she drove her ponies past the window, without looking up.
Thursday, September 15.—A golden autumn day, so warm and still that it reminded me of the Indian summer. Not a leaf stirred, but the insects in the air were like floating blossoms, and seemed to sleep upon their wings. Even all round my den the shadows were sultry, and intertangled with slumberous shafts of light.
This fine weather rather disappointed me, for I had arranged for a day’s recreation. In my youth, before I was caught myself in the tedious snares of speculation, I used to be an ardent fisherman, and I still retain sufficient knowledge of the gentle craft to cast a fly tolerably. So, tired of work, and a little weary of my own thoughts, I determined, for the first time, to take advantage of the permission my neighbour, Lord ————, has given me, and spend a day upon the river banks.
Despite the sunshine, and the absence of even a breath of wind, I shouldered my basket, lifted my rod, and set off. Ellen was already out and about; so I did not see her before I started. Taking a short cut through the shrubberies, I soon came to the banks of the Emmet—as pretty a little stream as ever rippled over golden sands, or reached out an azure arm to turn some merry watermill. Arrived there, I soon saw that it would be useless to try a cast till there was a little wind; so, without putting my rod together, I strolled on along the river-side, till I was several miles away from the Manor house.
The stream was rather low, but here and there were good deep pools, but so calm, so sunny, that every overhanging tree, every finger of fern, every blade of grass, was reflected in them as in a mirror. Still, as the time was, the waters were full of life. Over the pools hung clusters of flies like glittering spiders’ webs, scarcely moving in the sunshine; and when, from time to time, a trout rose, he leaped a full foot into the golden air above him, and sank back to coolness beneath an ever-widening ring of light. Sometimes from the grassy edge of the bank a water-rat would slip, swimming rapidly across, with his nose just lifted above the water, and his tail leaving a thin, bright trail. Water-ouzels rose at every curve, following swiftly the winding of the stream; and twice past my feet flashed a kingfisher, like an azure ray.
The way lay sometimes through deep grassy meadows, sometimes by the sides of corn-fields where the sheaves were already slanted, oftentimes through thick shrubberies and woods already yellow with the withering leaf. From time to time I passed a farm, with orchards sloping down to the very water’s edge, or pastures slanting down to shallows where the cattle waded, breaking the water to silver streaks and whisking their tails against the clustering swarms of gnats. It was very pleasant and very still, but, from a fishing point of view, exceedingly absurd.
By-and-by, however, a faint breeze began to touch the pools, and putting my rod together, and selecting my finest casting-line and two tiny flies, I tried a cast. Fortunately the wind was blowing sunward, and as I faced the light, the shadow fell behind me; but, nevertheless, the shadow of my rod flitted about at every cast, and threatened to spoil my sport. My first catch was an innocent baby-fish as big as my thumb, who came at the fly with a rush, and fought desperately when hooked. When I had disengaged him, and put him back into the water, he simply gave a flip of his little tail, and sailed contemptuously and quite leisurely out of sight, making me call to mind, with unusual humiliation, the well-known definition which Dr. Johnson gave of angling—“a fish at one end of the line, and a fool at the other,” I had tried a good many, casts before I took my first respectable fish—a trout of about half a pound. I caught him in a nice broken bit of water, just below a quaint old water-mill; and just as I put him into the basket, the portly miller came out to the granary door, and looked at me with a dusty smile. He evidently thought me a lunatic, to be out with a fishing-rod on such a day.
Half a mile further on I landed another glittering picture of at least a quarter of a pound; after that, another of half a pound; then my luck ceased, the wind fell, and it was full sunshine. By this time I had wandered a good many miles from home, and reached the spot where the river plunges into the Great Omberley woods. Here the stream was so rapid and the boughs so thick, that it was useless to think of casting; so I put up my rod, and, leaping over a fence, rambled away into the woods.