a trout. Daping is an absorbing business. Half-past five o'clock (to my annoyance) struck on the church clock, and I had daped nothing. I was not altogether surprised, hardly disappointed (for the rewards of daping are not frequent), in no wise cast down. I rejoined the river and waited for the red quills.
After I had been thus occupied for twenty or thirty minutes our purist Purfling came down stream towards me through the meadow, and, in reply to my question if any fly was showing up the water, informed me that the hatch of red quills was over. It had begun, he said, about half-past four. As it was ended, and as he had caught his (the assumption underlying the pronoun was intolerable) brace, he was going home. He dwelt at some distance from the river.
"I wonder," he said, "if you would do me a favour? I am a little late and take my road here. There is an old lady at the village—Mrs. Pescod, at the little shop. Hers is the only house at which, this season, I have not left a fish." I exclaimed at his generosity, no less than at his good fortune and skill (the paltry braggart!). "Nay," said he (he always says "Nay"), "there is no merit in giving away what one does not like. I think trout poor stuff. Give me a cod steak and oysters. As for my success I do not com-
