In the Quarter

``No, he was snarling over a dead buck.''

``Then you do deserve some respect.''

``If you like. But it was very easy. One bullet settled him. I was fined afterward.''

``Fined! for what?''

``For shooting the Emperor's trained cheetah. After that I always looked to see if the game wore a silver collar before I fired.''

Ruth would not look as if she heard.

Rex went on teasingly: ``I assure you it was embarrassing, when the pheasants were bursting cover, to be under the necessity of inquiring at the nearest house if those were really pheasants or only Chinese hens.''

``Rex,'' exclaimed Ruth, indignantly, ``I hope you don't think I believe a word you are saying.''

They had stopped to rest beside the stream, and now the colonel sauntered into view, his hands full of wild flowers, his single eyeglass gleaming beside his delicate straight nose.

``Do you know,'' he asked, strolling up to Ruth and tucking a cluster of bluebells under her chin, ``do you know what old Hugh Montgomery would say if he were here?''

``He'd say,'' she replied promptly, ``that `we couldn't take no traout with the pesky sun a shinin' and a brilin' the hull crick.'''

``Yes,'' said Rex. ``Rise at four, east wind, cloudy morning, that was Hugh. But he could cast a fly.''

``Couldn't he!'' said the colonel. ```I cal'late ter chuck a bug ez fur ez enny o' them city fellers, 'n I kin,' says Hugh. Going to begin here, Rex?''

``What does Ruth think?''

``She thinks she isn't in command of this party,'' Ruth replied.

``It will take us until late in the afternoon to whip the stream from here to the lowest bridge.'' Rex smiled down at her and pushed back his cap with a boyish gesture.

She had forgotten it until that moment. Now it brought a perfect flood of pleasant associations. She had seen him look that way a hundred times when, in their teens, they two had lingered by the Northern Lakes. Her whole face changed and softened, but she turned away, nodding assent, and went and stood by her father, looking down at him with the bantering air which was a family trait. The lively colonel had found a sunny log on the bank, where he was sitting, leisurely joining his rod.

``Hello!'' he cried, glancing up, ``what are you two amateurs about? As usual, I'm ready to begin before Rex is awake!'' and stepping to the edge he landed his flies with a flourish in a young birch tree. Rex came and disengaged them, and he received the assistance with perfect self-possession.

``Now see the new waterproof rig wade!'' said Ruth, saucily.

``Go and wade yourself and don't bully your old father!'' cried the colonel.

``Old! this child old!''

``Oh! come along, Ruth!'' called Rex, waiting on the shore and falling unconsciously into the tone of sixteen speaking to twelve.

For answer she slipped the cover from her slender rod and dexterously fitted the delicate tip to the second joint.

``Hasn't forgotten how to put a rod together! Wonderful girl!''

``Oh, I knew you were waiting to see me place the second joint in the butt first!'' She deftly ran the silk through the guides, and then scientifically knotting the leader, slipped on a cast of three flies and picked her way daintily to the river bank. As she waded in the sudden cold made her gasp a little to herself, but she kept straight on without turning her head, and presently stepped on a broad, flat rock over which the water was slipping smoothly.

Gethryn waited near the bank and watched her as she sent the silk hissing thirty feet across the stream. The line swished and whistled, and the whole cast, hand fly, dropper and stretcher settled down lightly on the water. He noticed the easy motion of the wrist, the boyish pose of the slender figure, the serious sweet face, half shaded by the soft woolen Tam.

Swish–h–h! Swish–h–h! She slowly spun out forty feet, glancing back at Gethryn with a little laugh. Suddenly there was a tremendous splash, just beyond the dropper, answered by a turn of the white wrist, and then the reel fairly shrieked as the line melted away like a thread of smoke. Gethryn's eyes glittered with excitement, and the colonel took his cigar out of his mouth. But they didn't shout, ``You have him! Go easy on him! Want any help!'' They kept quiet.

Cautiously, and by degrees, Ruth laced her little gloved fingers over the flying line, and presently a quiver of the rod showed that the fish was checked. She reeled in, slowly and steadily for a moment, and then, whiz–z–z! off he dashed again. At seventy feet the rod trembled and the trout was still. Again and again she urged him toward the shore, meeting his furious dashes with perfect coolness and leading him dexterously away from rocks and roots. When he sulked she gave him the butt, and soon the full pressure sent him flying, only to end in a furious full length leap out of water, and another sulk.

The colonel's cigar went out.

At last she spoke, very quietly, without looking back.

``Rex, there is no good place to beach him here; will you net him, please?'' Rex was only waiting for this; he had his landing net already unslung and he waded to her side.

``Now!'' she whispered. The fiery side of a fish glittered just beneath the surface. With a skillful dip, a splash, and a spatter the trout lay quivering on the bank.

Gethryn quickly ended his life and held him up to view.

``Beautiful!'' cried the colonel. ``Good girl, Daisy! but don't spoil your frock!'' And picking up his own rod he relighted his cigar and essayed some conscientious casting on his own account. But he soon wearied of the paths of virtue and presently went in search of a grasshopper, with evil intent.

Meanwhile Ruth was blushing to the tips of her ears at Gethryn's praises.

``I never saw a prettier sight!'' he cried. ``You're – you're splendid, Ruth! Nerve, judgment, skill – my dear girl, you have everything!''

Ruth's eyes shone like stars as she watched him in her turn while he sent his own flies spinning across a pool. And now there was nothing to be heard but the sharp whistle of the silk and the rush of the water. It seemed a long time that they had stood there, when suddenly the colonel created a commotion by hooking and hauling forth a trout of meagre proportions. Unheeding Rex's brutal remarks, he silently inspected his prize dangling at the end of the line. It fell back into the water and darted away gayly upstream, but the colonel was not in the least disconcerted and strolled off after another grasshopper.

``Papa! are you a bait fisherman!'' cried his daughter severely.

The colonel dropped his hat guiltily over a lively young cricket, and standing up said ``No!'' very loud.

It was no use – Ruth had to laugh, and shortly afterward he was seated comfortably on the log again, his line floating with the stream, in his hands a volume with yellow paper covers, the worse for wear, bearing on its back the legend ``Calman Levy, Editeur.''

Rex soon struck a good trout and Ruth another, but the first one remained the largest, and finally Gethryn called to the colonel, ``If you don't mind, we're going on.''

``All right! take care of Daisy. We will meet and lunch at the first bridge.'' Then, examining his line and finding the cricket still there, he turned up his coat collar to keep off sunburn, opened his book, and knocked the ashes from his cigar.

``Here,'' said Gethryn two hours later, ``is the bridge, but no colonel. Are you tired, Ruth? And hungry?''

``Yes, both, but happier than either!''

``Well, that was a big trout, the largest we shall take today, I think.''

They reeled in their dripping lines, and sat down under a tree beside the lunch basket, which a boy from the lodge was guarding.

``I wish papa would come,'' said Ruth, with an anxious look up the road. ``He ought to be hungry too, by this time.''

Rex poured her a cup of red Tyroler wine and handed her a sandwich. Then, calling the boy, he gave him such a generous ``Viertel'' for himself as caused him to retire precipitately and consume it with grins, modified by boiled sausage. Ruth looked after him and smiled in sympathy. ``I wonder how papa got rid of the other one with the green tin water-box.''

``I know; I was present at the interview,'' laughed Rex. ``Your father handed him a ten mark piece and said, `Go away, you superfluous Bavarian!'''

``In English?''