Or again, the river in the heat of an afternoon, stalking from the bank the chub that lay by the withies, and being careful with his shadow. He would wade slowly through the long grass with here and there a flower at random, or more often a bed of nettles. He would peer through the leaves that drooped in green plumes to where a chub cruised phantom-like in the cloudy onyx of the water. The sun made other smaller suns that would pierce his eyes and dazzling dance there. Bending low he would draw out as much line as he could. Stooping he would pitch his fly cunningly. The line might fall over the fin, and the fish would be gone. The chub were hard to catch from the bank, and often it was so hot that the only thing to do was to lie in the shade. There was an alder tree under which lived a rat. He would watch for it sometimes: if one kept still it would come out to play, or to teach a baby what to eat, or to wash in the water. The cattle, bored, might bestir themselves to come and look at him, blowing curiously. The flies would always be tiresome. The water slipped by. Why was it all over? But it wasn’t, he would cultivate his sense of hearing, he would listen to the water, and feel the alder, and the wind, and the flowers. Besides, there had only been about ten fishing days every summer, what with the prevailing wind, which was against the current, raising waves, and the rain in the hills which made mud of the water. There would be no more railing against the bad weather now, which had been half the joy of fishing. Sometimes, when he was rowing back in the dark after fishing over the sunset below, he had stopped by a withy that he could hardly see, to cast a white fly blindly into the pool of darkness beneath. He would strike by the ripple of light, he had caught two or three fish that way, and it was so mysterious in the twilight. Colours had been wonderful. But these were words only. What sense of beauty had others? Mamma never said any more than that a thing was pretty or jolly, and yet she loved this garden. She spent hours in weeding and in cutting off the heads of dead roses, and there were long talks with Weston when long names would come out of their mouths--why had some flowers nothing but an ugly Latin name? But you could not say that she had no sense of beauty. Harry looked upon the country from the hunting standpoint, whether there were many stiff fences and fox coverts. The Arts of Use. And there was Herbert, during the war, at Salonica. The only thing of interest he had remembered afterwards was that a certain flower, that they had here and that was incessantly nursed by Weston in the hot-house, grew wild and in profusion on the hills above the port. Egbert, the underkeeper, at Salonica also, had seen a colossal covey of partridges. That was all they remembered.