A SMALL EVENT
All service ranks the same with God:If now, as formerly He trodParadise, His presence fillsOur earth, each only as God willsCan work—God’s puppets, best and worst,Are we; there is no last nor first.Say not “a small event”! Why “small”?Costs it more pain than this, ye callA “great event” should come to pass,Than that? Untwine me from the massOf deeds which make up life, one deedPower shall fall short in or exceed!Pippa Passes.
All service ranks the same with God:If now, as formerly He trodParadise, His presence fillsOur earth, each only as God willsCan work—God’s puppets, best and worst,Are we; there is no last nor first.Say not “a small event”! Why “small”?Costs it more pain than this, ye callA “great event” should come to pass,Than that? Untwine me from the massOf deeds which make up life, one deedPower shall fall short in or exceed!Pippa Passes.
All service ranks the same with God:If now, as formerly He trodParadise, His presence fillsOur earth, each only as God willsCan work—God’s puppets, best and worst,Are we; there is no last nor first.
All service ranks the same with God:
If now, as formerly He trod
Paradise, His presence fills
Our earth, each only as God wills
Can work—God’s puppets, best and worst,
Are we; there is no last nor first.
Say not “a small event”! Why “small”?Costs it more pain than this, ye callA “great event” should come to pass,Than that? Untwine me from the massOf deeds which make up life, one deedPower shall fall short in or exceed!
Say not “a small event”! Why “small”?
Costs it more pain than this, ye call
A “great event” should come to pass,
Than that? Untwine me from the mass
Of deeds which make up life, one deed
Power shall fall short in or exceed!
Pippa Passes.
Pippa Passes.
Every night the Alfresco Entertainers gave their performance on a little platform set right under the shadow of the great cliff; while in front of them, not a dozen yards away, the rhythmic wash of the sea on a rocky shore seemed a sort of accompaniment to their songs, much softer and more tuneful than that of the poor, jingly, rheumatic piano, which had nothing between it and every sort of weather save an ancient mackintosh cover.
The village itself was but a shelf of shore with one long, straggling, lop-sided street: cottage and shop and great hotel set down haphazard, cheekby jowl, all apparently somewhat inept excrescences on the side of the green-clad cliffs rising behind them straight and steep, a sheer five hundred feet, and just across the narrow line of red road lies the Bristol Channel, with, on a clear day, the Welsh coast plainly in view.
At ten years old, people are generally found more interesting than scenery, and Basil took a great interest in the variety entertainers. They looked so smart and debonair, he thought, in their blue reefers, white duck trousers, and gold-laced yachting caps—though they none of them ever put out to sea. There were five of them altogether, two ladies and three men. Basil did not care so much about the ladies, in spite of the rows of Chinese lanterns that outlined the little stage and shone so pink in the darkness; there seemed no glamor or mystery about them. They were not transcendently beautiful like the gauzy good fairy of pantomime, or the peerless, fearless circus lady in pink and spangles: neither did they possess the mirth-provoking qualities of the dauntless three clad in yatching garb. One always sang sentimentally of “daddies,” or “aunties,” or “chords,” that had somehow gone amissing; and the other—Basil almost disliked that other—sang about things he could in nowise understand, in a hoarse voice, and danced in between the verses, and she didn’t dance at all prettily, for she had thick ankles and high shoulders.
But the three “naval gentlemen,” as Basil respectfully called them, sang funny songs, and acted and knocked each other about in such fashion ascaused him almost to roll off his chair in fits of ecstatic mirth. Nearly every fine night after dinner, if nobody wanted him, Harnet, the tall man-servant, would take Basil, and they sat on two chairs in the front row and listened to the entertainment. Sometimes grandfather himself would come, but he generally went to sleep in his chair at home; for when a man goes peel-fishing all day, walking half a dozen miles up the rocky bank of a Devonshire trout stream to his favorite pool, he is disinclined to move again, once he has changed and dined.
The bulk of the audience attending the Alfresco Entertainment sat on the wall separating shore from road, or on the curbstone, but there were always a few chairs placed directly facing the stage, which were charged for at sixpence each. Harnet was far too grand and dignified to sit on either wall or curbstone, and as grandfather always gave Basil a shilling to put in the cardboard plate, Harnet preferred to spend it in this wise.
Now all that company had high-sounding, aristocratic names, except one, who was called, as Basil said, “just simply Mr. Smith.” There was Mr. Montmorency, the manager, whose cheeks were almost as blue as his reefer, and his wife, the lady who danced in the evening, but in the daytime affected flowing tea-gowney garments and large flat hats; there was Mr. Neville Beauchamp, who sang coster songs, to whom the particular accent required for this sort of ditty really seemed no effort, as all his songs were given in similarly pronounced and singular fashion. The lady ofthe melancholy ballads was called De Vere; she looked thin and young and generally cold, as well she might, for she played everyone’s accompaniments, and never wore a coat, however cold the night. But it was for Mr. Smith that Basil felt most enthusiasm. In the first place, his speaking voice was as the voices of “grandfather’s friends.” In the second, he was, to Basil’s thinking, an admirable actor—changing face and voice, even his very body, to suit the part he happened to be playing; and thirdly, he was funny—funny in a way that Basil understood. Even grandfather laughed at Mr. Smith and applauded him, and when the cardboard plate went round, he sent Basil with the first bit of gold they had had that season.
“Clever chap that,” he said as they strolled homeward under the quiet stars. “Reminds me of someone somehow—looks like a broken-down gentleman; got nice voice, and nice hands—wonder what he’s doing with that lot?”
Basil, however, was quite content to admire Mr. Smith without concerning himself as to his antecedents. He forthwith christened him “the jokey man,” and it rather puzzled him that, except at night, the jokey man was hardly ever with the others, but went wandering about by himself in an aimless and somewhat dismal fashion. Could it be that Mr. Montmorency and Mr. Neville Beauchamp were proud, Basil wondered, because they had such fine names.
Basil’s face was as round as a full moon, and fresh and fair as a monthly rose. Tall and wellset up, he was good at games, and keen on every kind of sport. Long days did he spend up the river with his grandfather fishing for trout—he was to have a license for peel next summer, but had to be content with trout during this. He went sea-fishing, too, in charge of a nice fisherman called Oxenham, and caught big pollock outside the bay, and every morning Oxenham rowed Basil and Harnet out from the shore that they might have their morning swim, for the coast is so rocky and dangerous that bathing from the land is no fun at all—though the rocks are very nice to potter about on at low tide, when energetic persons can find prawns in the pools.
One day as Basil was busily engaged in this pursuit, who should come up behind him but the jokey man, looking as melancholy as though there was no sunshine, or blue water, or pleasant pools full of strange sea beasts. Indeed, although he was by profession such an amusing man, he had by no means a cheerful face. Tired lines were written all round his eyes, his shoulders were bent, and his long slim hands hung loose and listless at his sides, yet it was plain that he was by no means old. Moreover, he had changed his smart yachting suit for an old tweed coat and knickerbockers, and a grey billycock dragged over his eyes bereft his appearance of all traces of the jokey man. So that for a minute or two Basil did not know him, even although he sat down on a rock close by and lit his pipe.
Basil was standing bare-legged and knee-deep in water in pursuit of a particularly active and artfulshrimp, so that it was only when he at last lifted his head with an emphatic “bother,” that he noticed the stranger; then he beamed, for chance had tossed plump into his lap the opportunity he had long been seeking.
“How do you do?” the little boy inquired politely, taking off his muffin cap with one wet hand while he grasped his net with the other. “I am so pleased to have met you; I’ve wanted to for ever so long.”
“That’s very nice of you,” said the man, and when he smiled he looked quite young. “I am sure the pleasure is mutual.”
“I’ve something most pertickler to ask you,” continued Basil eagerly, scrambling out of the pool to sit on the rock beside him, “and it seemed as if I was never to get a chance. It’s not for myself either, it’s for Viola—you know Viola by sight, I daresay?”
Now it happened that the jokey man, like most other people in that village, knew Viola by sight very well indeed. In fact, Viola, and the General, and Basil, were as speedily pointed out to every stranger who arrived as though they had been bits of scenery. For they came every summer and the village was proud of them.
“Is she your sister?” asked the jokey man, suddenly taking his pipe out of his mouth.
“Yes, and she’s two year older than me, but she doesn’t go to school—I’ve been for a year—she has a ma’mselle. I daresay you’ve seen us with her. It’s been such a bore having her here, but she’s going to-morrow, and then we shall do just whatwe like, for there will be only Harnet and Polly, and we like them. Grannie had to go off quite suddenly to nurse Aunt Alice, and won’t be back for a week, so there’ll be nobody but grandfather and us; it’ll be simply ripping,” and Basil paused breathless, beaming at the pleasant picture he had conjured up.
The jokey man put his pipe back into his mouth and waited; but it had gone out, so he just laid it on the rocks beside him, saying:
“What was it you wanted to ask me?”
“It’s rather difficult to explain,” Basil began, turning very red and rumpling his hair. “It’s Viola, you know; she wants so dreadfully to come to your entertainment. I’ve told her about it, you know, but grandfather says——” Here Basil paused, and turned even redder than before: “One has to be so particular over one’s girls, you know,” he interpolated apologetically, “and she’s the only girl in our family. Grandfather never had any sisters or any daughters, so he thinks no end of Viola, and father and mother are in India, and he says——”
“That some of the songs are vulgar,” said the jokey man shortly. “So they are; he’s perfectly right.”
The jokey man looked at Basil, and Basil looked at the jokey man for a full minute. Then the little boy said very earnestly:
“Do you think that you could persuade them—those other gentlemen, I mean—to leave out one or two songs one evening? There’s that one about the ‘giddy little girl in the big black hat’ that Mr.Montmorency sings. Grandfather doesn’t like that one, and it’s not very amusing, is it? And Violadoeswant to come so dreadfully.”
The jokey man made no reply, but stared straight out to sea with a very grave face. Perhaps he was thinking of all those other Violas who listened night after night to the songs the General objected to, and were perhaps, unlike his Viola, not “cared about, kept out of harm, and schemed for, safe in love as with a charm.”
Basil waited politely for some minutes, then, as the jokey man didn’t speak, he continued earnestly:
“You see she can just hear that there is music and singing when the windows are open, and it’s so tantalizing, and you see it would be rude to walk away when we’d heard you, and come back next time you sang, wouldn’t it? It doesn’t matter for boys——”
“I’m not at all sure of that,” said Mr. Smith hastily; “it matters very much for boys, too, I think—especially if they don’t happen to have wise grandfathers with good taste. I’ll see what can be done, and let you know.”
“Oh, thank you so much!” cried Basil; “that is kind of you. Viola will be so pleased; she’s up the village now with Polly, or I’d fetch her to thank you herself.”
Now while Basil was talking he noticed that the jokey man’s coat had got leather on the shoulders, and that the leather looked as worn as the coat, so he rightly deduced that at some time or anotherhis new friend must have been something of a sportsman, and asked:
“D’you fish at all?”
“Not here,” said the jokey man, “but I’ve done some fishing in my time. Have you had good sport?”
Then immediately ensued a long discussion on the relative merits of flies, and Basil gave forth his opinion, an opinion backed up by the experience of numerous natives, that the “Coachman” was the fly for that neighborhood, but that there were occasions, especially early in July, when exceedingly good results might be obtained by using red ants. They told each other fishing stories. Basil confided to the jokey man that he had just got a beautiful new split cane rod from “Hardy Brothers,” promised to show it to him at the earliest possible opportunity, and they speedily became the best of friends. For it is a curious fact that although the actual sport itself is a somewhat taciturn pursuit, there are no more conversational sportsmen in the world than ardent followers of the gentle craft.
Another thing—they are always courteous listeners, and generally full of good stories themselves, yet have the most delicate appreciation of other people’s anecdotes. You can nearly always tell a member of a fishing family by this rare and pleasing trait.
Next morning the jokey man called at the hotel and asked for Basil at the door. He wouldn’t come in, and when Basil, greatly excited, appeared, only waited to say hastily: “If you like to bringyour sister to-night, I think I can promise you that it will be all right.” Then fled before Basil could thank him, and was soon pounding up the steep hill that ends abruptly at the hotel door, as though he were training for a mountaineering race.
Basil tore back into their sitting-room to lay the case before his grandfather, who, for once, was lunching in the hotel.
“He promised, you know,” he concluded jubilantly, “so shecancome, can’t she?”
Grandfather pulled his moustache and laughed. Then Viola came and laid her fresh soft cheek against his, murmuring pleadingly: “Darling, it would be so lovely,” till he pinched Viola’s cheek and made stipulations about heavy cloaks, and the children knew the day was won.
And the end of it all was that, at half-past eight that evening, grandfather, Basil and Viola were seated on three chairs in the very middle of the road that ran past the Alfresco Entertainers’ stage; but as the road ends abruptly in a precipitous rock some thirty yards further along, there is no fear of being run over by traffic.
What an evening of delight that was! How Basil and Viola laughed, and how pleased was grandfather! Another thing is quite certain—that the Alfresco Entertainers in no way lost by the alterations they had made in their programme; the rest of the audience seemed as pleased as Basil and Viola, and no one appeared to miss the “giddy little girl in the big black hat” the least little bit in the world.
“Really, it’s vastly civil of Mr. Thingummy,” said grandfather on their way home.
Grandfather and Harnet had gone fishing for the whole day. Mademoiselle had departed, only Polly was left in charge, and she had so bad a headache—she put it down to the close, cloudy weather—that she was fain to go and lie down directly she had waited upon Basil and Viola at their lunch, having given the children permission to go for a walk along the beach.
It was a grey day, humid and still, and, being low tide, there seemed no fresh wind blowing in from the sea as usual. The children scrambled over the rocks, very happy and important at being, for once, left to their own devices, and they decided to make an expedition to a little sandy bay that can be reached from the shore at low tide, and to come back by a steep winding path up the cliffs which terminates in the coach road just above the village. They had not considered it necessary to confide their intention to Polly, who would certainly have objected. They reached the bay all right, paddled for a little time on the hard, smooth sand, and then set out to climb the path which winds in and out of the side of the cliff for all the world like a spiral staircase up to some nine hundred feet above the sea. This path is so narrow that travelers can only walk in Indian file. On the one side is the steep face of the heather-clad rock, on the other a sheer drop on to the rocks below.
When the children had climbed about a third ofthe way they found themselves enveloped in white mist—a mist so thick, and fine, and clinging, that you cannot see your own hand held before your face. It was no use to go down again; the tide had turned, and soon the sea would be lapping gently at the foot of the pathway. There was nothing for it but to go on slowly, carefully, step by step, feeling all the time for the rocks on the inner side; by and by the path would widen.
“Don’t be frightened, Viola,” said Basil cheerfully. “It’ll take us a goodish while, but a bit higher up we can walk together.”
“I’m not exactly frightened,” said Viola in a tremulous voice, “but I rather wish we hadn’t come.”
“So do I,” Basil answered fervently. “If I hadn’t been such a juggins I’d have looked up and seen the mist on those cliffs long ago. Probably you can’t see that thereareany cliffs in the village now.”
On they toiled, slowly and painfully. It is really a most unpleasant mode of progression, walking sideways up a hill with your back against a very nubbly sort of wall.
“Hark!” cried Basil presently. “Didn’t you hear a call?”
The children paused, leant against the cliff, and listened breathlessly. Sure enough someone was calling. It sounded very muffled and far off; but it was plainly a man’s voice, and he was calling for help.
“Do you think it’s above or below?” Basilasked anxiously. “I can’t seem to tell in this fog.”
“It must be above, or we should have heard it before. Call out that we’re coming.”
Basil shouted with all the force of his young lungs, and again the faint, muffled voice answered with a cry for help.
“Come on,” exclaimed Basil in great excitement; “we’ll find him!” and sure enough in another bend of the path Basil nearly fell over the prostrate figure of a man lying right across it, for here it suddenly grew wider. The man raised himself on his elbow, exclaiming:
“I say, do you think that when you get to the village you could send help? I’m very much afraid that I’ve broken my leg. I can’t stand, and moving at all hurts it no end.”
“Why, it’s the jokey man!” Basil cried out in dismay. “However did you do it?”
“Oh, dear! oh, dear!” added Viola. “This is sad.”
None of them could see the other, but nevertheless, the jokey man knew in a minute who had come to his rescue, and forgot his injuries in his surprise, exclaiming:
“Whatever are you two doing here? Is the General with you?”
“Oh, dear, no,” said Viola proudly; “we’requitealone, or we shouldn’t be here, but isn’t it a good thing wearehere? How did you fall?”
“I was mooning along, not thinking where I was going, when down came the mist. I made a false step and went bang over the edge, but onlyfell on to the path below, not right over, as I might have done.... Perhaps it would have been better if I had,” he added to himself.
“You’d better go and get help, Basil,” said Viola decidedly, “and I’ll stay and take care of Mr. Smith till they come.”
But Mr. Smith wouldn’t hear of this. The children helped him to crawl as near the inner side as possible, and when they left him he nearly fainted with the pain of moving. It began to rain, the cold, soft, wetting rain of a Devonshire summer, and Mr. Smith groaned and shivered.
“I am so sorry for you,” said a soft voice close beside him. “Is there nothing I could do? Wouldn’t you be more comfortable if you were to rest your head in my lap? It would be a sort of pillow. Daddie used to go to sleep like that sometimes out on the moors last summer, when they were home.”
“Oh, Viola, Viola!” exclaimed the jokey man, with far more distress than he had yet shown, “why did you stay? You will get cold. It’s raining already, and they will be ages.”
“There’s no use worrying about that,” said Viola, edging herself nearer. “We couldn’t leave you here all alone and hurt, and Basil wouldn’t let me go on to the village ’cause of the fog, so of course I stayed. I hope you won’t mind very much; I won’t talk if you’d rather not, but I think I’d like to hold your hand if you don’t mind. It would be comforting.”
The kind little hand was curiously comforting to the jokey man: he insisted on taking off hiscoat and wrapping Viola in it, in spite of all her protests. Presently the white pall of mist lifted a little and they could see one another, and it certainly was a great pleasure to the man lying against the cliff to watch the little high-bred face with the kind blue eyes turned in such friendly wise toward him. Viola was so like Basil, and yet so entirely individual. Basil’s face was round, hers was oval; Basil’s nose was broad and indefinite as yet, Viola’s nose was small and straight and decided, with the dearest little band of freckles across the bridge. Basil’s manner was extremely friendly, Viola’s was tender and protecting, and it was such a long time since anyone had taken care of the jokey man, that he almost crooned to himself in the delight of being so tended. She was very tender in her inquiries after his aches and pains, expressed a pious hope that he always wore “something woolly next him,” and being reassured on that head, proceeded to suggest that he should smoke if he found it comforting. Then she told him a great deal in very admirative terms about daddy, and grandfather, and Basil, for Viola was of that old-fashioned portion of femininity that looks upon her own mankind as beings of stupendous strength and wisdom. The man lay watching her very intently, but it is not certain that he heard half of what she was saying. He had the look of one who was trying to make a difficult decision. The voices of habit and tradition called very loudly to him just then—dared he listen?
Presently Viola’s voice ceased. She was evidently waiting for an answer, and none came.
“Have you any sisters, Mr. Smith?” she repeated.
Mr. Smith shook his head, then he raised himself on his elbow, saying earnestly:
“Look here, Viola! I want you to tell me exactly what you think about something. Suppose Basil—of course it’s utterly impossible, but still—suppose that when he was grown up he did something that annoyed you all very much, something disappointing and entirely against his father’s wishes”—he paused, for Viola looked very grave and pained—“and then,” he continued, “if he went right out of sight, and you, none of you, heard anything more about him for nearly a year—supposingthenhe was sorry, said he was sorry——”
“We should never lose sight of Basil,” said Viola decidedly, her eyes dark and tragic at the mere thought. “At least, I’m sure I shouldn’t; whatever he did I should love him just the same. You don’t love people for their goodness—you love them because they’rethey.”
“Are you sure?” asked the jokey man earnestly.
Viola looked hard at him, turned very red, and said shyly:
“Do you think you could tell me just what you did? I know it’s you.”
The man leant back against the wall again.
“It’s not an interesting story,” he said wearily, “but it may pass the time. I was at the ’varsity, Cambridge. I was always very fond of acting, and I was extravagant and lazy, too. The veryterm I went in for my degree I was acting in the A.D.C., and—I was plucked. My father was furious. Then came a whole sheaf of debts. He said I must go back to a small college, live on next to nothing, work, and take my degree. Instead of taking my punishment like a man, I quarreled with everybody, vowed I’d go on to the stage, and came to this. I have kept body and soul together, and I don’t think I’ve done anything to be ashamed of since, but I’m sick and sorry at the whole business. Yet now that I’m all smashed up and useless, it seems somehow mean to go back. My father’s a parson, you know, not over well off, and there are a good many of us.”
All the pauses in his story, and there were a good many, had been punctuated by Viola with reassuring little pats, and now that the pause was so long that he seemed to have finished his story, she turned a beaming face toward him.
“Howgladthey will be!” she exclaimed. “You must write to-night directly you get back. Howgladyour mother will be!”
A spasm of pain crossed his face. “My mother died just before I left school,” he said.
Viola’s eyes filled with tears, and she had just exclaimed, “And you have no sisters either, you poor dear?” when the rescue party, accompanied by Basil and the nearly frantic Polly, appeared just below them. They carried the jokey man to the foot of the cliff and took him back to the village in a boat, and as his ankle proved to be very badly broken he elected to go into the cottage hospital on the hill. The long wait in the wet, thathad not in the least hurt Viola, proved altogether too much for the jokey man. That night he became feverish and delirious, and when the children and the General went to ask for him next day, they were told that he was very ill indeed, and that the broken ankle was quite a small matter in comparison with the pneumonia. That evening the doctor called on the General, and directly the performance was over, the General went to see the Alfresco Players at their lodgings.
“Do you happen to know who his people are?” the General asked Mrs. Montmorency.
“He never let on that he’d got any folks, poor fellah,” she answered with a sob. She had a kind heart if her ankles were thick. “He was never one to talk about himself, and he’s never had so much as a postcard by post since he’s been here, that I do know. His real name’s not Smith at all; all his linen—beautiful and fine his shirts are too—is all marked ‘Selsley.’”
“Have you no idea what part of the country he came from?” the General asked. “Then we could look in a directory. It would be a horrible thing if——”
“He joined us in London,” Mrs. Montmorency gasped between her sobs, while her tears made little pathways on her painted cheeks. “He hadn’t any references, but I persuaded my husband to take him. He carried his references in his face, I said, and so I’m sure we’ve found it, for a nicer, more obliging, gentlemanly——”
“Do you think, sir,” Mr. Montmorency interrupted, “that he told the little lady anythingabout himself when they were up on the cliff together?”
“God bless my soul!” exclaimed the General in great excitement. “Of course he did; I have it. Who has got a clergy list?”
Naturally none of the Alfresco Players possessed such a work, and it was already too late to knock up the vicar of the parish. But next morning the General called on the vicar very early, and then despatched an exceedingly long telegram to the post office and several bottles of champagne to the cottage hospital, where Polly, Basil and Viola hung about the doors all the morning hoping for better news. The Alfresco Players got out a green leaflet to the effect that there would be that night a benefit performance for that talented artist, Mr. Smith, who had been suddenly stricken down by serious illness. The General seemed to send and receive a great many telegrams, and did not go fishing all that day. At sundown there was no better news at the hospital, and it seemed exceedingly probable that the jokey man would joke no more. The General met the last train, and drove away from the station accompanied by an elderly, severe-looking clergyman. They stopped at the hospital and the clergyman went in.
The jokey man was so noisy and talked so continuously that the hospital authorities had him moved from the men’s surgical ward into a little room by himself. As the matron showed the strange clergyman into this room, a nurse rose from the chair at the bedside. The jokey man’svoice was no longer loud, but he kept saying the same thing over and over again.
“All day long he keeps repeating it,” she whispered. “I’m so thankful you’ve come, for he can’t possibly last if this restlessness continues.”
“I’m sure he’ll come if you send,” the weak, irritable voice went on. “Why don’t you send? I want my father—‘father, I have sinned’—that’s it—‘father, I have sinned’—but I know he’ll come if you send. I want my father, I tell you—why won’t you send? I want my father.”
The whispering voice persisted in its plaint, the hot hands plucked at the sheet when other hands closed over them, holding them firmly, and the voice he was waiting for said quietly:
“My dear son, I am here.”
As the sick man raised his tired eyes to the grave grey face bent over him, his troubled mind was flooded with an immense content, his poignant restlessness was calmed.
“Good old father!” he said softly, and lay quite still.
The jokey man thought better of it, and didn’t die after all. In another week Basil and Viola were allowed to go and see him. They stood very hushed and solemn on either side of his bed, for he looked very thin and white, and was still lying right on his back, which made him seem more ill somehow. For quite a minute nobody said anything at all, till Basil, who held a large folded bracken leaf in his hand, laid it down on the jokey man’s chest and spread it out. A fish speckled with brown reposed in solemn glory in the midst.
“It’s for your dinner,” whispered Basil. “It’s only four ounces off the pound. I caught it myself two hours ago. Viola saw me do it. I think a ‘Coachman’s’ the best fly after all.”