“And the dead sheep?”
But Haynes only shook his head and attacked his breakfast.
After breakfast the party separated, Haynes riding over to see some of the fishermen, Helga busying herself with household affairs, Miss Ravenden joining her father in a butterfly expedition to the Hither Wood, and Colton going off alone in ill-humour after a signal discomfiture.
He had endeavoured to convince Miss Ravenden that he cherished a passionate fondness for entomology, hoping thereby to gain an invitation to join the party. Unfortunately he undertook the role of a semi-expert, and being by nature the most honest and open of men had fallen into the pit she dug. Upon his profession of faith she at once, so he flattered himself, accepted him as a fellow enthusiast, and began to describe to him a procession of Arachnidae across a swamp.
“In the lead was one great, tiger-striped fellow,” she said. “Are you familiar with the beautiful, big arachnid with the yellow-and-black wings?”
“Yes, indeed!” said Colton eagerly. “I used to see’em flitting around the roses at our summer place.”
“Then,” she said mischievously, “you ought to alter your habits. The arachnids are spiders. Anyone who sees winged spiders is safer fishing than on a butterfly hunt. Good-bye, Dr. Colton.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE WONDERFUL WHALLEY
THUS cruelly disabused of his hopes, Dick Colton went fishing. But his heart was not in the sport. Absentmindedly he made up a cast of flies and spent an hour of fruitless whipping before it dawned upon him that he had been using a scarlet ibis and a white miller in a blaze of direct sunshine. Having changed to a carefully prepared leader of grey and black hackles, he had better luck; but for the first time in his life successful angling had lost its savour. Laying aside his rod, he climbed a hillock to look over the landscape. It was a blank. Nowhere in the range of vision could he discern a butterfly net. The rock where he had spread his coat suggested a seat. He sat down there, and for one solid hour proved with irrefutable logic that that which was, couldn’t possibly be so, because he had known Dolly Ravenden only two days. Having attained this satisfactory conclusion, he took out the twenty-dollar bill and regarded it with miserly fervour. Haynes, coming over the hill, caused a hasty withdrawal of currency.
The reporter seemed tired and worried. In answer to the physician’s inquiry whether anything new had developed, he shook his head. Colton dismissed that subject, and with his accustomed straightforwardness went on to another, upon which he had been deliberating with an uneasy mind.