So, in such waters, he never receives the compliment for which his snobbish soul craves. But where trout and grayling of three to four pounds are fairly common possibilities, your plump chevin, well dissimulated in a deep place, may easily pass for a sporting and desirable fish. Then, like the mock Alexander after that encounter in St. James's Street, he is well content, and if an angler should take him seriously and offer him a cocked dun he has to put a fearful force upon himself to refrain from rising to it. How he boasts to the daces afterwards.
It has now become my duty to expose this impostor. The other rods must know, and any visitor who comes to fish, that the vicinity of the wooden bridge is polluted. Purfling I am tempted to send after "a great trout that defies all my skill." His subsequently expressed pity for my ignorance would be of a delicate savour. But no. Purfling must be told like the rest. It would be injudicious to send Purfling after a chevin.
There is no saying what kind of a seizure would carry him off, and I do not desire Purfling's death. His pity I could bear but not his obituary notices. And, away from the river, I believe him to be a useful citizen. He addresses meetings (I am told), and it is well that meetings should be addressed.
