ul up that one. I'll try this," said Perigal.

Mavis did as she was told, to find there was something sufficiently
heavy at the end of her line to bend the top joint of her rod.

"I've got a fish!" she cried.

"Pull up carefully."

She pulled the line from the water, to find that she had hooked an old
boot.

Perigal laughed at her discomfiture.

"It is funny, but you needn't laugh at me," she said, slightly
emphasising the "you."

"Never mind. I'll bait your hook, and you must have another shot."

Her newly baited line had scarcely been thrown in the water when she
caught a fine roach.

"You'd better have it stuffed," he remarked, as he took it off the hook.

"It's going to stuff me. I'll have it tomorrow for breakfast."

In the next hour, she caught six perch of various sizes, four roach,
and a gudgeon. Perigal caught nothing, a fact that caused Mavis to
sympathise with his bad luck.

"Next time you'll do all the catching," she said.

"You mean you'll fish with me again?"

"Why shouldn't I?"

"Really, with me?"

"I like fish for breakfast," she said, as she turned from the ardour of
his glance.

Presently, when they had "jacked up," as he called it, and walked
together across the meadows in the direction of the town, she said
little; she replied to his questions in monosyllables. She was
wondering at and a little afraid of the accentuated feeling of
helplessness in his presence which had taken possession of her. It was
as if she had no mind of her own, but must submit her will to the
wishes of the man at her side. They paused at the entrance to the
churchyard, where he asked:

"And what have you been doing all this time?"

She told him of her visit to the Trivetts.

His face clouded as he said:

"Fancy you hobnobbing with those common people!"

"But I like them--the Trivetts, I mean. Whoever I knew, I should go and
see them if I liked them," she declared, her old spirit asserting
itself.

He looked at her in surprise, to say:

"I like to see you angry; you look awfully fine when that light comes
into your eyes."

"And I don't like you at all when you say I shouldn't know homely,
kindly people like the Trivetts."

"May I conclude, apart from that, you like me?" he asked. "Answer me;
answer me!"

"I don't dislike you," she replied helplessly.

"That's something to go on with. But if I'd known you were going to
throw yourself away on farmers, I'd have hung after you myself. Even I
a