"If I were a member of the firm, I should say, "all hearts,"
mademoiselle, without doubt."
"For shame, Mr. Lasalle!" cried Miss Powder.
"Fish are made to be caught, mademoiselle," said Mr. Lasalle, throwing his own line again.
"For shame, Mr. Lasalle! How many hearts do you think one lady wishes to catch?"
"No limit that I know"--said the gentleman serenely.
"Well, but--are there no other fish in this brook?" said Wych Hazel.
"Miss Kennedy makes small account of the first kind," said Stuart, laughing. "That sport is old already. There must be difficulty to give interest, Lasalle, you know."
"You gentlemen are complimentary," said Miss Powder.
"Upon my word, I said what I thought," replied the first gentleman.
"Miss Kennedy," called Stuart out from his post down the brook; "should compliments be true or false, to be compliments? Miss Powder is too indignant to be judge in the case."
"I do not see how false ones can compliment," said the lady in green, much intent upon her line. "There!--Mr. Lasalle--is that what you call a bite?"
It was no bite.
"But people need not know they are false?" pursued Stuart.
"Well," said Wych Hazel, looking down at him, "you were talking of what things _are_--not what they seem."
"You may observe," said Mr. Lasalle, "that most people find it amusing to get bites--if only they don"t know there"s no fish at the end of them." Mr. Lasalle spoke feelingly, for he had just hooked and drawn up what proved to be a bunch of weeds.
"But where there is," said Wych hazel. "There! Mr. Lasalle, I have got your fish!" and swung up a glittering trophy high over the gentleman"s head.
"The first fish caught, I"ll wager!" cried Stuart; and he looked at his watch. "Twenty-seven minutes past twelve. Was that skill or fortune, Miss Kennedy?"
"Neither, sir," observed Mr. Simms, who had wandered that way in search of a hook. "There was no hope of Miss Kennedy"s descending to the bed of the brook--what could the fish do but come to her? Happy trout!"
"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 n.o.body 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 appet.i.te."
"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."
"What led it,--not astray,--was your calm declining of all but true words of service."
"O, had you gone back _there?_" she said. "I think it takes very little philosophy to decline what one does not want."
"Evidently. But how came you not to want what everybody else wants? There is the philosophy, you see. If you bring all things down to bare truth, you will be Diogenes in his tub presently."
" "Bare truth!" "--said the girl. "How people say that, as if truth were only a lay figure!"
"But think how disagreeable truth would often be, if it were not draped! Could you stand it? I beg pardon! I mean, not you, but other people!"
"I _have_ stood it pretty often," said the girl with a grave gesture of her head.
"Impossible! But did you believe that it was truth?"
"Too self-evident to be doubted!"
Stuart laughed, again with a very unfeigned tribute of pleasure or admiration in his face. "It is a disagreeable truth," said he, "that that is not a good sandwich. Permit me to supply its place with something else. Here is cake, and nothing beside that I can see; will you have a piece of cake?
It is said to be a feminine taste."
"No, not any cake," said Wych Hazel, her eyes searching the brook shadows. "But I will have another sandwich, Mr.
Nightingale--if there is one. At least, if there is more than one!"
"Ah," said Stuart, "you shall have it, and you shall not know the state of the basket. Those two people have so much to talk about, they have no time to eat!" And he took another sandwich himself.