ushing persons who
had been only seven years in the county.

All of which the delighted mother read in his countenance, herself
keeping an air of sweet disinterestedness.

"They'll be here this evening for dinner. I'm sending the carriage over
for them, and they won't stay more than a week."

"Perhaps I shall go up to town. I don't quite know yet." Georgie moved
away irresolutely. There was a lecture at the United Services Institute
on the supply of ammunition in the field, and the one man whose theories
most irritated Major Cottar would deliver it. A heated discussion was
sure to follow, and perhaps he might find himself moved to speak. He
took his rod that afternoon and went down to thrash it out among the
trout.

"Good sport, dear!" said the mother, from the terrace.

"Fraid it won't be, mummy. All those men from town, and the girls
particularly, have put every trout off his feed for weeks. There isn't
one of 'em that cares for fishin'--really. Fancy stampin' and shoutin'
on the bank, and tellin' every fish for half a mile exactly what you're
goin' to do, and then chuckin' a brute of a fly at him! By Jove, it
would scare me if I was a trout!"

But things were not as bad as he had expected. The black gnat was on the
water, and the water was strictly preserved. A three-quarter-pounder
at the second cast set him for the campaign, and he worked down-stream,
crouching behind the reed and meadowsweet; creeping between a hornbeam
hedge and a foot-wide strip of bank, where he could see the trout, but
where they could not distinguish him from the background; lying almost
on his stomach to switch the blue-upright sidewise through the checkered
shadows of a gravelly ripple under overarching trees. But he had known
every inch of the water since he was four feet high. The aged and astute
between sunk roots, with the large and fat that lay in the frothy scum
below some strong rush of water, sucking as lazily as carp, came to
trouble in their turn, at the hand that imitated so delicately the
flicker and wimple of an egg-dropping fly. Consequently, Georgie found
himself five miles from home when he ought to have been dressing for
dinner. The housekeeper had taken good care that her boy should not go
empty, and before he changed to the white moth he sat down to excellent
claret with sandwiches of potted egg and things that adoring women make
and men never notice. Then back, to surprise the otter grubbing for
fresh-water mussel