"Hasten, Thusis," I called to her. "I'll be ready in ten minutes."
"I've a good mind not to go," she said.
"You've a _good_ mind," said I, disinterring a fine fat worm.
"I have a mind, anyway, and it counsels me not to go fishing with you,
Don Michael."
"Argue with it," said I. "It's a reasonable mind, Thusis, and is open
to conviction. Prove to it that you ought to go fishing."
"Don Michael, you are ridiculous."
"Let it be a modest lunch," said I, "nourishing and sufficient. But not
a feast, Thusis. Don't put in any wreaths of roses, or any tambourines.
But you can stick a fry-pan into the basket, with a little lard on the
side, and I'll show you how we cook trout in the woods at home."
"In Chile?"
"In the Adirondacks," said I, smiling.
I went on digging and accumulating that popular lure for trout not
carried in the fly-books of expert anglers, but known to the neophyte as
the "Barn-yard Hackle."
Once I glanced over my shoulder. Thusis was not there. Presently, and
adroitly dissembling my anxiety by a carefully camouflaged series of
sidelong squints I discovered her near the kitchen-wing of the chalet
talking earnestly to Josephine.
And so it happened that, having garnered a sufficiency of Barn-yard
hackles, I went to the fountain pool to wash my hands.
And when, with playful abandon, I stood drying them upon my
knickerbockers, I saw Thusis emerge from the house carrying my
pack-basket.
She came up rather slowly.
"Here is your lunch," she said, looking at me with an inscrutable
expression suggesting amusement and annoyance in an illogical
combination.
"You mean _our_ lunch," said I.
"I mean _your_ lunch."
"Aren't you coming, Thusis?"