the side next the wall. There was a
path there nearly free from briers, and she held her light summer dress
round her tightly. Ned thought he had never seen anyone so prettily
dressed. She wore a striped muslin variegated with pink flowers; there
were black bows in her hat and black ribbon was run down the bottom of
her dress; she looked very pretty against the old wall touched here and
there with ivy. And the grace of her movement enchanted Ned when she
leaned forward and prevented the trout from escaping up the stream. But
Ned's side of the stream was overgrown with briers and he could not
make his way through them. Once he very nearly slipped into the stream,
and only saved himself by catching some prickly briers, and Ellen had
to come over to take the thorns out of his hand. Then they resumed
their fishing, hunting the trout up and down the stream. But the trout
had been hunted so often that he knew how to escape the nets, and dived
at the right moment. At last wearied out he let Ned drive him against
the bank. Ellen feared he would jump out of the net at the last moment,
but he was tired and they landed him safely.

And proud of having caught him they sat down beside him on the grass
and Ellen said that the gardener and the gardener's boy had tried to
catch him many times; that whenever they had company to dinner her
father said it was a pity they had not the big trout on the table.

The fishing had been great fun, principally on account of Ellen's
figure, which Ned admired greatly, and now he admired her profile, its
gravity appealed to him, and her attitude full of meditation. He
watched her touching the gasping trout with the point of her parasol.
She had drawn one leg under her. Her eyes were small and grey and
gem-like, and there was a sweet look of interrogation in them now and
then.

"I like it, this lustreless day," said Ned, "and those swallows
pursuing their food up and down the lustreless sky. It all seems like a
fairy-tale, this catching of the fish, you and I. The day so dim," he
said, "so quiet and low, and the garden is hushed. These things would
be nothing to me were it not for you," and he put his hand upon her
knee.

She withdrew her knee quickly and a moment after got up, and Ned got up
and followed her across the grass-plot, and through the rosary; not a
word was said and she began to wonder he did not plead to be forgiven.
She felt she should send him away, but she could not find words to t