We heard the Dean reascend the kitchen steps, and make a statement of which the words “drink” and “Dora” alone reached us.  The drawing-room door closed, and in the release from tension I sank heavily down upon a heap of potatoes.  The wolf of laughter that had been gnawing at my vitals broke loose.

“Why did you go out of the room on your hands and knees?” I moaned, rolling in anguish on the potatoes.

“I got under the table when I heard the brute coming,” said Robert, with the crossness of reaction from terror, “then she settled down to eat biscuits, and I thought I could crawl out without her seeing me”

“Ye can come out!” said Julia’s mouth, appearing at a crack of the scullery door, “I have as many lies told for ye—­God forgive me!—­as’d bog a noddy!”

This mysterious contingency might have impressed us more had the artist been able to conceal her legitimate pride in her handiwork.  We emerged from the chill and varied smells of the scullery, retaining just sufficient social self-control to keep us from flinging ourselves with grateful tears upon Julia’s neck.  Shaken as we were, the expedition still lay open before us; the game was in our hands.  We were winning by tricks, and Julia held all the honours.

PART II

Perhaps it was the clinging memory of the fried pork, perhaps it was because all my favourite brushes were standing in a mug of soft soap on my washing stand, or because Robert had in his flight forgotten to replenish his cigarette case, but there was no doubt but that the expedition languished.

There was no fault to be found with the setting.  The pool in which the river coiled itself under the pine-trees was black and brimming, the fish were rising at the flies that wrought above it, like a spotted net veil in hysterics, the distant hills lay in sleepy undulations of every shade of blue, the grass was warm, and not unduly peopled with ants.  But some impalpable blight was upon us.  I ranged like a lost soul along the banks of the river—­a lost soul that is condemned to bear a burden of some two stone of sketching materials, and a sketching umbrella with a defective joint—­in search of a point of view that for ever eluded me.  Robert cast his choicest flies, with delicate quiverings, with coquettish withdrawals; had they been cannon-balls they could hardly have had a more intimidating effect upon the trout.  Where Robert fished a Sabbath stillness reigned, beyond that charmed area they rose like notes of exclamation in a French novel.  I was on the whole inclined to trace these things back to the influence of the pork, working on systems weakened by shock; but Robert was not in the mood to trace them to anything.  Unsuccessful fishermen are not fond of introspective suggestions.  The member of the expedition who enjoyed himself beyond any question was Mrs. Coolahan’s car-horse.  Having been taken out of the shafts on the road above the river, he had with his harness on his back, like Horatius, unhesitatingly lumbered over a respectable bank and ditch in the wake of Croppy, who had preceded him with the reins.  He was now grazing luxuriously along the river’s edge, while his driver smoked, no less luxuriously, in the background.