chosen to take the trouble,
without moving more than her dark, silky lashes. Had she ever taken that
trouble? He did not know, of course. He would like to have known.

He nodded absently to the hero of the welt-weh clash, and, pipe in one
hand, pole in the other, walked slowly down the road, crossed the track,
and seated himself on the platform's edge.

She was at her desk, reading. And the young man felt himself turning red
as he realised that, if she had chosen, she could have seen him sitting
here every evening with his eyes fixed--yes, sentimentally fixed upon the
back of her head and her pretty white neck and the lovely contour of her
delicately curved cheek.

All by himself he sat there and blushed, head lowered, apparently fussing
with his line and hook and trying to keep his eyes off her, without much
success.

His angling methods were simple; he crossed the grass-grown track, set
his pole in position, and returned to seat himself on the platform's
edge, where he could see his floating cork and--her. Then, as usual, he
relapsed into meditation.

If only just once she had ever betrayed the slightest knowledge of his
presence in her vicinity he might, little by little, cautiously, and by
degrees, have ventured to speak to her.

But she never had evinced the slightest shadow of interest in anything as
far as he had noticed.

Now, as he sat there, the burnt out pipe between his teeth, watching
alternately his rod and his divinity, the rose-breasted grosbeak began to
sing in the pink light of sunset. Clear, pure, sweet, the song rang
joyously from the tip of the balsam's silver-green spire. He rested his
head on one hand and listened.

The song of this bird, the odour of heliotrope, the ruddy sunlight
netting the ripples--these, for him, must forever suggest her.

He had curious fancies about her and himself. He knew that, if she ever
did turn and look at him out of those lilac-tinted eyes, he must fall in
love with her, irrevocably. He admitted to himself that already he was in
love with all he could see of her--the white neck and dull gold hair, the
fair cheek's curve, the glimpse of her hand as she deliberately turned a
page in the book she was reading.

But that evening passed as had the others; night came; she lowered her
curtain; a faint tracery of lamplight glimmered around the edges; and, as
always, he lighted his pipe and took his fish, and shouldered his pole
and went home to die the little dea