"Between these banks we in abundance find,
Variety of trouts of many different kind;
Upon whose sides, within the water clear,
The yellow specks like burnished gold appear.
And great red trouts, whose spots like rubies fine.
Mixed 'mong silver scales refulgent shine."
The summer sped away.
But early autumn still found us among the bonnie blooming heather.
We were real gipsies now. We had settled down long since to our
strangely delightful nomadic life. We were both healthy and happy.
There were roses on the cheeks of Maggie May, and--let me whisper it--
freckles on her nose.
Frank was as brown as a brick, and even Bob and the caravan cat had
increased in size, and looked intensely self-satisfied, and on good
terms with themselves.
This chapter finds me fishing in the Don; Maggie May is basking in the
sunshine, book in hand, and the rest of our crew are invisible.
"There is something radically wrong, Robert," I said, casting my fly for
the fortieth time, and so coaxingly too, over the very spot where I knew
more than one fine finny fellow was hiding.
"Something radically wrong, Bob; either the sky is too clear or the
water too bright, or there isn't wind enough, or I haven't got the right
fly on. But never a bite and never a ghost of a nibble have I had for
the last half-hour. I'm tired of it; sick of it. But they are there,
Bob, for many a one we have landed on luckier days than this. Besides,
what says the old, old poem?"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bob wagged his immensity of a tail by way of reply, but he never took
his eyes off a hole in the bank, that he had been as earnestly watching
as I had been flogging the pool.
Whip! Splash! I thought I had one then. And I believe I would have
had one, only out of its hole sprang a big black vole, and took to the
water. In floundered Hurricane Bob after it, and there was an end to my
fishing.
Bob came out of the water presently, and stood between me and the sun,
and shook himself several times, causing a rainbow to appear around him
each time he did so.