"That's it," returned Sylvia. "There was a regular `boil' on there the day before you came, but that was in the evening. I took out seven trout in twenty-five minutes. Then the `boil' stopped and you couldn't move a fish. But we'd better start soon." "All right. I'll go and get my rod." The Vicar went out on to the lawn to see them off, and smoke his after-breakfast pipe. "Cynthia, my dear," he called. "Come outside and walk up and down a bit." She made some excuse about seeing to the things being cleared away. However she soon joined him. "That nest of young thrushes is gone," he said, peering into the ivy which hid the garden wall. "Some cat has found them, I expect. By the way, Cynthia, do you really intend to marry Herbert Raynier?" "Why, what on earth do you mean, father?" she answered, resentment and astonishment being about evenly divided in her tone. "Precisely what I say, dear--no more and no less. Because if you don't you're going the right way to work to let him see it." "If I don't. But I do--of course I do. I can't think what you're driving at." "Oh, it's simple enough. Couldn't you manage now and then, if only for a change, to give him a civil word? Men don't like to be perpetually found fault with and hauled over the coals," pronounced the Vicar, speaking with some feeling, moved thereto by sundry vivid recollections of his own, for he was a widower. Cynthia coloured. "But they require it--and--it's only for their good," she answered. "No deadlier motive could be adduced," returned her father, drily. "Because, you see, if you use the whip too much they're apt to kick. And I descry symptoms of such a tendency on the part of Herbert I thought I'd give you a hint, that's all. It would be a pity to lose him. His position is excellent and his prospects ditto; besides, he's a thoroughly good fellow into the bargain." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The pool beneath Blackadder Bridge was wide enough for a rod on each side, so that neither interfered with the other, but Raynier and his future sister-in-law had met with scant sport. The surroundings, however, were lovely: the soft roll of the wooded hills resounding with the joyous shout of the cuckoo, the blue haze of spring beneath the cloudless sky, and meadows spangled with myriad butter cups; while, hard by, skipping perkily in and out of their knob-like nest against the hoary mossiness of the buttressed bridge, a pair of water-ouzels took no count whatever of their human disturbers. The bleating of young lambs was in the air, mingling with the tuneful murmur of the brown water purling out from the breadth of the deep pool into a miniature rapid. "Well, you two? What have you got to show for yourselves?"