With a flat rock for a table, the grass to sit upon, and the bubbling music of the little stream that flowed from the spring as an accompaniment, the ham and bread and butter, the pickles and the hard-boiled eggs, and even the pie with its mysterious leather crust and its doubtful inside of dried peaches, tasted wonderfully well.  We did not venture out upon the river again until three o’clock, our worthy guides agreeing that the fish do not bite well between noon and that hour, and both of us being disposed to rest a little.  My friend stretched himself on the thick grass, and when his pipe was exhausted went fast asleep, and snored with great precision and power to a mild sternutatory accompaniment by Mr. McGrath and Pete.  I employed myself in bringing up my largest bass from the boat to sit for his picture in a little basin in the rock under the spring.  After he had floundered himself into a comparatively rational and quiet condition, much after the fashion of a gentleman reluctant to have his portrait taken under the auspices of the police, I succeeded in committing him to paper.  He was a handsome fish, and eminently deserving of the distinction thus conferred upon him.

Sleeping in the grass on a summer afternoon is a bucolic luxury I never fully appreciated.  When I stirred up my friend he was red, perspirational and full of lively entomological suspicions.  He slapped the legs of his pantaloons vigorously in spots, moved his arms uneasily, took off his shirt-collar and implored me to look down his back.

“There’s nothing there,” I reported.  “I know how it is myself:  a fellow always feels that way when he goes to sleep in the grass.”

“Any woodticks here?” he asked.

“Begorra! plenty,” said Mr. McGrath, sitting up.  “They et a child,” he added with perfect seriousness of manner, “down here below last summer.”  McGrath’s eyes twinkled when my friend began to talk of peeling off and jumping into the river after a general search.  He was finally reassured, and we started out.  We had even better sport than in the morning, and accumulated a splendid string of fish each.  On the way down we passed two boats in which were some gentlemen, evidently foreigners, engaged in throwing flies with apparently the same results that we had attained in the morning.

“Do you know who those people are?” I asked McGrath.

“I dunno, sorr,” said he, “but I think they are from one of the legations at Washington.  They come up for a day’s fishin’ all along of the illigant fishin’ a party from the same place had one day last week I suppose;” and he smiled.

“How was that, McGrath?”