Timsy had constituted himself Jim’s shadow, and courier-in-chief to the party. He knew all the country with a boy’s knowledge, had an acquaintance with the ways of trout which seemed miraculous in one of his years, and cherished a feud of long standing with John Conolly, whose treatment of the little ass did not come up to the standard instilled into Timsy by the sergeant, now in France. All these matters he placed at the absolute disposal of Jim. The rest of the party he treated politely: they were well enough. But the big boy in khaki was somehow different, and Timsy gave him all his warm little heart. It was a shock to him that Jim and Wally appeared in rough tweeds on the morning after their arrival. “Where’s you uny-forms?” demanded Timsy, hopping on one foot on the mossy path, rather like an impertinent sparrow. “Upstairs,” Jim said, solemnly. “Why for don’t you put ’em on?” “Didn’t want to.” Timsy surveyed him with a pained air. “Me daddy says uny-form had a right to be wore all the time,” he said. “He didn’t have no uvver clothes when _he_ came home.” Jim relented at the small, worried face. “Tell you how it is, old man,” he said. “The old Germans laid us out; and we’re going to get better as quick as we can, to go and lick them.” “Yes?” said Timsy, digging his heel into the earth, in bloodthirsty ecstasy. “That’s what me daddy’s after doing.” “Of course he is. Well, we’ll get better quicker if we haven’t got to wear heavy uniforms all the time, don’t you see? So we asked leave; and a big general said we could put on other clothes. He was a very big general, so it’s all right, isn’t it?” “Was he very big?” “Enormous,” said Jim, gravely. “If he was very ’normous, I ’spect it’s all right,” Timsy said, relinquishing his point with reluctance. “Only I likes you best in uny-forms.” His eye suddenly lit with new hope. “Do you think you’d wear ’em on Sunday, an’ you goin’ to church?” “I would,” Jim said. “There, it’s a bargain, Timsy.” So Timsy accepted the tweed knickerbockers as necessary evils, and peace reigned. As for the trout, they had remained in peace. Patsy Burke had given the Australians a few lessons in throwing a fly, a gentle art to which they did not take very kindly, though they proved apt enough pupils. But the trout were not rising, and they found it dull. Their previous experience had been either the primitive method of a stick, a string, and a worm, in the creeks at home, or a deep-sea hand-line with a substantial bait and a heavy sinker. They liked these peaceful ways, and to them the incessant business of casting seemed, in the Australian phrase, “too much like hard work.” They endeavoured, however, to keep this view from the scandalized Mr. Burke, whose scorn at the mere mention of a hand-line was almost painful to witness.