Knowing that English people take their breakfast late, Jone and I got up early, so as to get through before our lodger came down.  But, bless me, when we went to the front door to see what sort of a day it was we saw him coming in from a walk.  “Fine morning,” said he, and in fact there was only a little drizzle of rain, which might stop when the sun got higher; and he stood near us and began to talk about the trout in the stream, which, to my utter amazement, he called a river.

“Do you take your license by the day or week?” he said to Jone.

“License!” said Jone, “I don’t fish.”

“Really!” exclaimed Mr. Poplington.  “Oh, I see, you are a cycler.”

“No,” said Jone, “I’m not that, either, I’m a pervader.”

“Really!” said the old gentleman; “what do you mean by that?”

“I mean that I pervade the scenery, sometimes on foot and sometimes in a trap.  That’s my style of rural pleasuring.”

“But you do fish at home,” I said to Jone, not wishing the English gentleman to think my husband was a city man, who didn’t know anything about sport.

“Oh, yes,” said Jone, “I used to fish for perch and sunfish.”

“Sunfish?” said Mr. Poplington.  “I don’t know that fish at all.  What sort of a fly do you use?”

“I don’t fish with any flies at all,” said Jone; “I bait my hook with worms.”

Mr. Poplington’s face looked as if he had poured liquid shoe-blacking on his meat, thinking it was Worcestershire sauce.  “Fancy!  Worms!  I’d never take a rod in my hands if I had to use worms.  Never used a worm in my life.  There’s no sort of science in worm fishing.”

“There’s double sport,” said Jone, “for first you’ve got to catch your worm.  Then again, I hate shams; if you have to catch fish there’s no use cheating them into the bargain.”

“Cheat!” cried Mr. Poplington.  “If I had to catch a whale I’d fish for him with a fly.  But you Americans are strange people.  Worms, indeed!”

“We don’t all use worms,” said Jone; “there’s lots of fly fishers in America, and they use all sorts of flies.  If we are to believe all the Californians tell us some of the artificial flies out there must be as big as crows.”

“Really?” said Mr. Poplington, looking hard at Jone, with a little twinkling in his eyes.  “And when gentlemen fish who don’t like to cheat the fishes, what size of worms do they use?”

“Well,” said Jone, “in the far West I’ve heard that the common black snake is the favorite bait.  He’s six or seven feet long, and fishermen that use him don’t have to have any line.  He’s bait and line all in one.”

Mr. Poplington laughed.  “I see you are fond of a joke,” said he, “and so am I, but I’m also fond of my breakfast.”

“I’m with you there,” said Jone, and we all went in.