’I am afraid he feels very much like a fish out of water, nevertheless,’ said Wych Hazel, eyeing her prize and her line with a demure face.

Alas! it was the beginning and ending of their good fortune for some time.  Mr. Simms went back to his place; Mr. Lasalle disengaged the fish and rearranged the bait; and all four fell to work, or to watching, with renewed animation; but in vain.  The rods kept their angle of suspension, unless when a tired arm moved up or down; the fishers’ eyes gazed at the lines; the water went running by with a dance and a laugh; the fish laughed too, perhaps; the anglers did not.  There were spicy wood smells, soft wood flutter and flap of leaves, stealing and playing sunbeams among the leaves and the tree stems; but there was too much Society around the brook, and nobody heeded all these things.

‘Well, what success?’ said Mme. Lasalle coming up after a while.  ’What have you caught?  One little fish!  Poor little thing!  Is that all?  Well, it’s luncheon time.  Lasalle, I wish you’d go and see that everybody is happy at the lower end of the line; and I’ll do your fishing meanwhile.  Oh, Simms has almost killed me!  Stuart! do take charge of that basket, will you?’

Mr. Nightingale receiving the basket from the hands of a servant, inquired of his aunt what he was to do with it.

’Mercy! open it and give us all something—­I am as hungry as I can be.  What have you all been doing that you haven’t caught more fish?  My dear,’ (to Wych Hazel), ’that is all you will get till we go home; we came out to work to-day.’

And Stuart coming up, relieved her of her fishing rod, found a pleasant seat on a mossy stone, and opened his basket.

‘As the fish won’t bite—­Miss Kennedy, will you?’

‘If you please,’ she said, taking a new view from her new position.  ’How beautiful everything is to-day!  Certainly I have learned something about brooks.’

‘And something about fishing?’

‘Not much.’

‘The best thing about fishing,’ said Stuart, after serving the other ladies and coming back to her, ’is that it gives one an appetite.’

‘Oh, then you have not studied the brook.’

‘Certainly not,’ said he, laughing, ’or only as one studies a dictionary—­to see what one can get out of it.  Please tell me, what did you?’

‘New thoughts,’ she said.  ’And new fancies.  And shadows, and colours.  I forgot all about the fish sometimes.’

‘You are a philosopher?’ said Stuart, inquisitively.

‘Probably.  Don’t I look like one?’

He laughed again, with an unequivocal compliment in his bright eyes.  He was a handsome fellow, and a gentleman from head to foot.  So far at least as manners can make it.

’I do not judge from appearances.  Do you care to know what I judge from?’

‘Your judgment cannot have been worth much just now,’ said Wych Hazel, shaking her head.  ’But I am willing to hear what led it astray.’