ccupants having gone to London.
But a couple of bachelors can be happy in an empty house, without
servants and modern luxuries, as long as the may-fly lasts. It is
pleasant to feel that you can dine at any hour you please, and wear what
you please. The good lady who cooks for you is merely the wife of one of
the shepherds; but her cooking is fit for a king! What dinner could be
better than a trout fresh from the brook, a leg of lamb from the farm,
and a gooseberry tart from the kitchen garden? For vegetables you may
have asparagus--of such excellence that you scarcely know which end to
begin eating--and new potatoes.

For my part, I would sooner a thousand times live on homely fare in the
country than be condemned to wade through long courses at London dinner
parties, or, worse still, pay fabulous prices at "Willis's Rooms," the
"Berkeley," or at White's Club.

What a comfort, too, to be without housemaids to tidy up your papers in
the smoking-room and shut your windows in the evening! How healthful to
sleep in a room in which the windows have been wide open night and day
for months past!

Sport is usually to be depended upon in the may-fly time, as long as you
are not late for the rise. Of late years the fly has "come up" so early
and in such limited quantities that but few fishermen were on the
water in time.

We are apt to grumble, declaring that the whole river has gone to the
bad; that the fish are smaller and fewer in numbers than of yore,--but
is this borne out by facts? The year 1896 was no doubt rather a failure
as regards the may-fly; but as I glance over the pages of the game-book
in which I record as far as possible every fish that is killed, I cannot
help thinking that sport has been very wonderful, take it all round,
during six out of seven seasons.

It is a lovely day during the last week in May. There has been no rain
for more than a fortnight; the wind is north-east, and the sun shines
brightly,--yet we walk down to the River Coln, anticinating a good day's
sport among the trout: for, during the may-fly season, no matter how
unpropitious the weather may appear, sport is more of a certainty on
this stream than at any other time of year. Early in the season drought
does not appear to have any effect on the springs; we might get no rain
from the middle of April until half-way through June, and yet the water
will keep up and remain a good colour all the time. But after June is
"out," down goes the wat