CHRIS went on the Friday, and for days beforehand he was like a schoolboy going off for an unexpected holiday.
He packed his things long before they would be needed, and unpacked them again because he wanted to use them; he took stacks of clothes and golf sticks and a brand-new fishing-rod, which he put together for Marie's benefit, showing her how perfectly it was made and telling her what sport he hoped to have with it.
Marie tried to be enthusiastic and failed; once long ago she had stood on a river bank with Chris and watched him play a trout, finally landing the silvery thing on the grassy bank, where it lay and gasped in the burning sunshine before he mercifully killed it with a stone.
She had hated the sport ever since—it had seemed so cruel, she thought.
In a moment of bravado she had once dared to say so to him, and had never forgotten the stony look of disapproval with which he regarded her.
"Cruel!" he echoed scathingly. "How In the world do you suppose fish are caught, then? You seem to like them for breakfast, anyway."
She knew that was true enough, but to see them served up cooked and inanimate was one thing, and to see them dragged from the clear depths of a river to gasp life away on the bank quite another.
Chris put the new rod away rather offendedly.
"Of course, you don't care for sport," he said, "I forgot."
122 That hurt more than anything, especially as she knew that either Dorothy Webber or Mrs. Heriot would have thoroughly entered into a discussion with him upon the merits of bait and the various catches he had successfully landed.