The brook was giving that live, persistent call to a listener that
trout brooks always make; it ran with a free, swift current even here,
where it crossed an apparently level piece of land. I saw two
unpromising, quick barbel chase each other upstream from bank to bank
as we solemnly arranged our hooks and sinkers. I felt that William's
glances changed from anxiety to relief when he found that I was used to
such gear; perhaps he felt that we must stay together if I could not
bait my own hook, but we parted happily, full of a pleasing sense of
companionship.
William had pointed me up the brook, but I chose to go down, which was
only fair because it was his day, though one likes as well to follow
and see where a brook goes as to find one's way to the places it comes
from, and its tiny springs and headwaters, and in this case trout were
not to be considered. William's only real anxiety was lest I might
suffer from mosquitoes. His own complexion was still strangely
impaired by its defenses, but I kept forgetting it, and looking to see
if we were treading fresh pennyroyal underfoot, so efficient was Mrs.
Todd's remedy. I was conscious, after we parted, and I turned to see
if he were already fishing, and saw him wave his hand gallantly as he
went away, that our friendship had made a great gain.
The moment that I began to fish the brook, I had a sense of its
emptiness; when my bait first touched the water and went lightly down
the quick stream, I knew that there was nothing to lie in wait for it.
It is the same certainty that comes when one knocks at the door of an
empty house, a lack of answering consciousness and of possible
response; it is quite different if there is any life within. But it
was a lovely brook, and I went a long way through woods and breezy open
pastures, and found a forsaken house and overgrown farm, and laid up
many pleasures for future joy and remembrance. At the end of the
morning I came back to our meeting-place hungry and without any fish.
William was already waiting, and we did not mention the matter of
trout. We ate our luncheons with good appetites, and William brought
our two stone bottles of spruce beer from the deep place in the brook
where he had left them to cool. Then we sat awhile longer in peace and
quietness on the green banks.
As for William, he looked more boyish than ever, and kept a more remote
and juvenile sort of silence. Once I wondered how he had come to be so
curiously wrinkled, forgetting, absent-mindedly, to recognize the
effects of time. He did not expect any one else to keep up a vain show
of conversation, and so I was silent as well as he. I glanced at him
now and then, but I watched the leaves tossing against the sky and the
red cattle moving in the pasture. "I don't know's we need head for
home. It's early yet," he said at last, and I was as startled as if
one of the gray firs had spoken.
"I guess I 'll go up-along and ask after Thankful Hight's folks," he
continued. "Mother 'd like to get word;" and I nodded a pleased assent.