“I fail, sir, to perceive the analogy.”
“My dear Rose, the too logical mind is destructive of the very foundations of social gaiety. Young man rises to a fly; salmon rises to a fly.”
“But no right-minded woman casts a fly over. Oh, they just—you know.”
“No, I don’t. Both the fish and the man have the right of choice; but there is some responsibility as to the attractiveness of a Jock Scott, or a Durham fanger. So, after all, the young man’s anguish may be the fault of the wicked milliner. As a question of morals one likes to know.”
“But will he—will he come back?”
“Really, Rose, that was worthy of Sarah Siddons. It might have been said of the most attractive of my sex.”
“Bother the men, papa; I want my fish. What is a man to a salmon!”
“I recognize that assertion of personal ownership as distinctively feminine.”
“You are too bad. How it pours!”
“Try him again. Cast out to right, and let the fly come down, around the tail of the boat, with not too much movement, just as if you were quite indifferent; an ordinary, every-day promenade, my dear. The application is, you see, of skill acquired in one branch of industry to the cultivation of another.”