A Young Man in a Hurry, and Other Short StoriesChambers, Robert W. (Robert William)
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A Young Man in a Hurry, and Other Short Stories
Chambers, Robert W. (Robert William)
Short stories; United States -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
"I'm going to walk down to the little foot-bridge," she said, steadily,
examining the coffee in her tiny cup; "and if you will stroll down with
your pipe, I ... I will tell you something."
"That will be very jolly," he said. "There's a full moon; I mean to have
a try at a thumping big fish in the pool above."
She nodded, and he rose and attended her to the door.
Then he lighted a cigar and called for a telegram blank.
This is what he wrote:
"_James J. Crawford, 318 New Broad Street, N.Y._:
"I am at the Sagamore. When do you want me to return?
"JAMES H. CRAWFORD."
The servant took the bit of yellow paper. Crawford lay back smoking and
thinking of trout and forests and blue skies and blue eyes that he
should miss very, very soon.
Meanwhile the possessor of the blue eyes was standing on the little
foot-bridge that crossed the water below the lawn.
A faint freshness came upward to her from the water, cooling her face.
She looked down into that sparkling dusk which hangs over woodland
rivers, and she saw the ripples, all silvered, flowing under the moon,
and the wild-cherry blossoms trembling and quivering with the gray wings
of moths.
"Surely," she said, aloud--"surely there is something in the world
besides men. I love this--all of it! I do indeed. I could find happiness
here; I do not think I was made for men."
For a long while she stood, bending down towards the water, her whole
body saturated with the perfume from the fringed milkweed. Then she
raised her delicate nose a trifle, sniffing at the air, which suddenly
became faintly spiced with tobacco smoke.
Where did the smoke come from? She turned instinctively. On a rock
up-stream stood young Crawford, smoking peacefully, and casting a white
fly into the dusky water. Swish! the silk line whistled out into the
dusk.
After a few moments' casting, she saw him step ashore and saunter
towards the bridge, where she was standing; then his step jarred the
structure and he came up, cap in one hand, rod in the other.
"I thought perhaps you might like to try a cast," he said, pleasantly.
"There's a good-sized fish in the pool above; I raised him twice. He'll
scale close to five pounds, I fancy."
"Thank you," said Miss Castle; "that is very generous of you, because
you are deliberately sacrificing the club loving-cup if I catch that
fish."
He said, laughing: "I've held the cup before. Try it, Miss Castle; that
is a five-pound fish, and the record this spring is four and a half."
She took the rod; he went first and she held out her hand so that he
could steady her across the stones and out into the dusk.
"My skirts are soaked with the dew, anyway," she said. "I don't mind a
wetting."
He unslung his landing-net and waited ready; she sent the line whirling
into the darkness.
"To the right," he said.
For ten minutes she stood there casting in silence. Once a splash in
the shadows set his nerves quivering, but it was only a muskrat.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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