First and repeatedly there
glimmered a gossamer over the stream, falling into the water and as often
rising again; then above the film of light flashed another, rising abruptly
golden into the sunshine. Not for a moment or two did she discover the
flashing thing was a fly-rod, but presently the man who held it appeared
below her at a bend of the streamlet. He was clad much like the artists,
and it made the blood flush hot to her cheek as she thought he might be
one. Young men sometimes fished the brook for the fingerling trout it
contained. They were small but sweet, and the catching them with a fly was
difficult work in a stream so overhung with tangles of vine and brier, so
densely planted in the wider reaches with water hemlock and lesser weeds.
This fisherman, at any rate, found successful sport beyond his power to
achieve. He flogged away, but hung his fly clear of the stream at every
second cast and deceived not the smallest troutlet of them all. The young
man, after the manner of those anglers classified as "chuck and chance it,"
worked his clumsy way toward Joan's chair on the granite bowlder.
Motionless she sat, and her drab attire and faded sun-bonnet harmonized so
well with the tones around it--the gray of the stones, the lights of the
river, the masses of the meadowsweet--that while noting a broad and
sparkling stickle winding away beneath her, the angler missed the girl
herself.
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