no. No tea. Well, a cup—while I get on my waders and put the rod together). You are also, sir, to know that it is six years since I said goodbye to this same river Clere, my companion of five summers. How then shall I shift furniture or empty trunks, when he is all agog to greet me?
Come, let us be off. Will you go with me? The lady of the house is busy, and I am happy and prepared to prattle.
I say, sir, that we grow into friendship with a long-fished river as with a good comrade. The odd days, never repeated, that we have had on other waters are comparable to those single, rare, glorious encounters with the choice spirits, which Circumstance forbids us to improve. At the dinner-table, in a railway train, yea, by the water's edge we meet. Heart goes out to heart; each recognises in the other something of himself. It is a moment pregnant with the excitement of discovery, with all the possibilities that congeniality offers. One thinks, "If I were not going to Australia to-morrow!"; the other, "Would this man awaited me in Archangel! I could love him like a brother." Yet, though we never meet again, we remember, not perhaps the name, not perhaps the features, but something which is independent of these accidents. Friendship is
