a fly-rod.

The latter shot a side long glance at the party from under a broad
Panama hat,--then jammed that, rather uncivilly, further down upon his
head.

"Bah! The fish aren't ex-act-ly jumping out of the water, saying
'Hullo!' to you!" it returned in the freakish drawl of a masked battery,
shrinking deeper into cover amid the ferns.

Yet, when the Nature students had passed on, one quivering girl, with
ears intently on the alert, heard it fire off something in the same
fern-cloaked rumble about a certain fly being a "perfect peach" to fish
with.

And the answer came in clear, ringing, boyish tones--from another angler
presumably--momentarily rainbowing the wood.

"Yes--sure--that Parmachene belle is _the girl_, Dad! If--if
there's a trout in the stream, she'll put the 'come hither!' on it."

"Bah! Likening a trout-fly to a girl! So like his 'nickum' impudence!"
Pem's teeth--in her present mood--came together with a snap. And, of
course, she couldn't see the gnat's raft when she arrived at the
stagnant puddle, for she had borrowed the gnat's sting with which to
barb the snub which she meant to inflict, some time, upon that angling
youth who had sat, unabashed, in the Devil's Chair,--if ever luck held
out a chance.

"Yes--yes! and if he had played Jack at a Pinch forty-eleven million
times, I'd do it." Her eyes were flashing now like the sky-dots in the
pool, forked by iridescent shadows. "So--so _here's_ where they
have their camp," craning her neck for a glimpse of a log-cabin amid the
spruces. "Stud said it was just across the lake from the girls'!"

After that--well! who could be interested in gnat-boats when they had
just lit upon the ambush of a Puzzle; a puzzle that would only open in a
pinch and shut up, like a Chinese ring-box, afterwards?

And, moreover, that woodland lurking-place was just a bare mile and a
half across the Bowl from the floating barrel pier, decked, as it was
built, by girls' hands, and from the great heart's-ease bungalow, now,
too, in process of decoration for the gala time in the afternoon around
the White Birch totem; and for the blissful, far-off event, drawing
nearer with every shining moment, the brilliant piazza, dance in the
evening!

CHAPTER XVIII

REPRISALS

"Her tunic is of silver,
Her veil of green tree-hair,
The woodland Princess donning
Her pomp of summer wear.

White arms to heaven reaching,
Shy buds that, tiptoe, me