Nevertheless he continued to invite them, exploring every nook of their
watery pathway with his soft-swishing line. In a rough suit and battered
hat adorned with those artificial and other flies, which infest Harris
tweed, he crept along among the hazel bushes and thorn-trees, perfectly
happy. Like an old spaniel, who has once gloried in the fetching of
hares, rabbits, and all manner of fowl, and is now glad if you will but
throw a stick for him, so one, who had been a famous fisher before the
Lord, who had harried the waters of Scotland and Norway, Florida and
Iceland, now pursued trout no bigger than sardines. The glamour of a
thousand memories hallowed the hours he thus spent by that brown water.
He fished unhasting, religious, like some good Catholic adding one
more to the row of beads already told, as though he would fish himself,
gravely, without complaint, into the other world. With each fish caught
he experienced a solemn satisfaction.
Though he would have liked Barbara with him that morning, he had only
looked at her once after breakfast in such a way that she could not see
him, and with a dry smile gone off by himself. Down by the stream it was
dappled, both cool and warm, windless; the trees met over the river, and
there were many stones, forming little basins which held up the ripple,
so that the casting of a fly required much cunning.
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