The trout opened and shut its mouth once or twice without saying anything, and then it slewed round and turned its other eye upon him. Then it turned its back on him altogether, and took no further notice of him. This was rather an unpromising beginning, but David was so eager to learn how to swim, fish-fashion, that he risked being snubbed. ‘Could you spare me the time just to show me the sort of way it goes?’ he asked. ‘You wave yourself,’ said the trout, ‘and then you go. The sooner you go, the better I shall be pleased.’ David waved himself, and ran into the trout’s tail. ‘Don’t do that,’ said the trout, not the least angrily, but in the same bored manner. ‘It’s bad manners to hit anybody’s tail. You’re a very ill-bred sort of creature.’ ‘I’m very sorry,’ said David. ‘I didn’t mean to hit you.’ ‘Then you did it without meaning,’ said the trout, with its back to him, ‘which is worse, because there’s no sense in it, if it doesn’t mean anything. I wish you would go away. Right away, I mean: none of your hanging about here. Get some low, coarse fish to teach you. I’m busy.’ David felt rather discouraged. He didn’t know what adventure might happen next, or how soon it might happen, and he wanted to learn how to swim fish-fashion before something else took place. But he felt he could not face any more dull eyes just yet, which looked at you as if you didn’t mean anything, and so he moved very cautiously away from this stupid old thing, for fear of butting it again, and began practising by himself. He found it was not so difficult as it seemed to be at first (which is the case with most things). The great point was to make up your mind first where you wanted to go to, and then look at the place and wave yourself, and he found that he usually went in that sort of direction, just as if there was something inside him that knew how to do it, if he only told it what he wanted. He passed a fish now and then, which took no notice whatever of him, and presently he found he was getting on so well that he wished to show off to somebody, so he returned in the direction of the trout that was so busy. There it was precisely as David had left it, doing nothing whatever except slowly opening and shutting its mouth, and staring at nothing at all. So David gave a tremendous kick in order to dash up to it in a real fish-boy-like manner, and, miscalculating his direction, ran violently into its nose. ‘Don’t go on doing that,’ said the trout. ‘You butt me here, and you butt me there, and you’ve got no self-control. It’s very boring of you. Better go away. You needn’t bother to come back any more, for ever. I shan’t miss you at all. I only wish you had missed me.’ ‘I wish I had too,’ said David. ‘But I was getting on so nicely, and I wanted to show somebody.’ ‘And you’re mudding everything up,’ said the trout. ‘So you’d better show somebody else, and not me. I don’t care what you do, or where you go, so long as you don’t do and go it here.’