“And that one won’t be me,” said Jone, “for fishing is not one of the branches I teach in my school.”

I would have liked it better if Jone and me had gone alone, he doing nothing but row; but the landlord wouldn’t let his boat that way, and said we must take a gilly, which, as far as I can make out, is a sort of sporting farmhand.  That is the way to do fishing in these parts.

Well, we started, and Jone sat in the front, with his back to me, and the long-legged gilly rowed like a good fellow.  When we got to a good place to fish he stopped, and took a fishing-rod that was in pieces and screwed them together, and fixed the line all right so that it would run along the rod to a little wheel near the handle, and then he put on a couple of hooks with artificial flies on them, which was so small I couldn’t imagine how the fish could see them.  While he was doing all this I got a little fidgety, because I had never fished except with a straight pole and line with a cork to it, which would bob when the fish bit; but this was altogether a different sort of a thing.  When it was all ready he handed me the pole, and then sat down very polite to look at me.

Now, if he had handed me the rod, and then taken another boat and gone home, perhaps I might have known what to do with the thing after a while, but I must say that at that minute I didn’t.  I held the rod out over the water and let the flies dangle down into it, but do what I would, they wouldn’t sink; there wasn’t weight enough on them.

“You must throw your fly, madam,” said the gilly, always very polite.  “Let me give it a throw for you,” and then he took the rod in his hand and gave it a whirl and a switch which sent the flies out ever so far from the boat; then he drew it along a little, so that the flies skipped over the top of the water.

[Illustration:  “I DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING, AND TAKING THE POLE IN BOTH HANDS I GAVE IT A WILD TWIRL OVER MY HEAD”]

I didn’t say anything, and taking the pole in both hands I gave it a wild twirl over my head, and then it flew out as if I was trying to whip one of the leaders in a four-horse team.  As I did this Jone gave a jump that took him pretty near out of the boat, for two flies swished just over the bridge of his nose, and so close to his eyes as he was reading an interesting dialogue, and not thinking of fish or even of me, that he gave a jump sideways, which, if it hadn’t been for the gilly grabbing him, would have taken him overboard.  I was frightened myself, and said to him that I had told him he ought not to come in the boat, and it would have been a good deal better for him to have stayed on shore.