"I've heard that name
before. Who was Mr Bootherboomp?"

"Hi--hi--hi! hecker--hecker--hecker. Heigh!"

That does not express the sounds uttered by Dave, for they were more
like an accident in a wooden clock, when the wheels run down and finish
with a jerk which breaks the cogs. But that was Dave's way of laughing,
and it ended with a horrible distortion of his features.

"I say: don't, Dave. What an old nut-cracker you are! You laugh like
the old watchman's rattle in the garret. Be quiet, Tom!"

"But Mr Bootherboomp!" roared Tom, bursting into a second fit of
laughter.

"It's butterbump, Mr Marston. It's what they call those tall brown
birds something like herons. What do you call them in London?" said
Dick.

"Oh, bitterns!"

"Yes, that's it. Come on!"

"Nay," said Dave; "I don't think you gentlemen would care for such poor
sport. On'y a few fish'."

"You never mind about that! Jump in, Mr Marston. Who's going to
pole?"

"Nay, I'll pole," said Dave. "If yow mean to go we may as well get
theer i' good time; but I don't think it's worth the trouble."

"Get out! It's rare good fun, Mr Marston; sometimes we get lots of
fish."

"I'm all expectation," said Marston as Dave smiled the tight smile,
which made his mouth look like a healed-up cut; and, taking the pole,
began to send the punt over the clear dark water. "Shall we find any of
those curious fish my men caught in the river the other day?"

"What curious fish were they?" asked Dick.

"Well, to me they seemed as if so many young eels had grown ashamed of
being so long and thin, and they had been feeding themselves up and
squeezing themselves short, so as to look as like tench as possible."

"Oh, I know what you mean!" cried Tom. "Eel-pouts! they're just about
half-way between eels and tench."

"Nay, yow wean't catch them here," said Dave oracularly. "They lives in
muddy watter in rivers. Our watter here's clean and clear."

It was a bright pleasant journey over the mere, in and out of the lanes
of water to pool after pool, till Dave suddenly halted at a canal-like
spot, where the water ran in between two great beds of tender-growing
reeds, which waved and undulated in the soft breeze. Here he thrust
down his pole and steadied the punt, while he shook out his light net
with its even meshes, securing one end to a pole and then letting the
leaden sinkers carry it to the bottom before thrusting the punt over to
the other side of the