Sparrows Part 61

"I've a beastly 'pip.' It's catching."

"Where did you catch it?"

"I've always got it more or less."

"I'm sorry. I've to thank you for those violets."

"Rot!"

"I was glad to get them."

"Really, really glad?" he asked, his face lightening.

"Of course. I love flowers."

"I see," he said coldly.

She made as if she would leave him, but, as before, felt a certain inertness in his presence which she was in no mood to combat; instead of going, she turned to him to ask:

"Anything happened to you since I last saw you?"

"The usual."

"What?"

"Depression and rows with my father."

"I thought you'd forget your promise."

"On the contrary, that's what all the row was about."

"How was that?"

"First of all, I told him that I had met you and all you told me about yourself."

"That made him angry?"

"And when I told him I wanted to have another shot at something, a jolly good shot this time, he said, 'I suppose that means you want money?'"

"What did you say?"

"One can't make money without. That's what all the row's been about.

He's a fearful old screw."

"As well as I remember, my father always liked him."

"That was before I grew up to sour his life."

"Did you tell him how you saved Jill's life?" asked Mavis.

"I'd forgotten that, and I'm also forgetting my fis.h.i.+ng."

"May I come too?"

"I've a spare rod if you care about having a go."

"I should love to. I've often thought I'd go in for it. It would be something to do in the evenings."

She walked with him a hundred yards further, where he had left two rods on the bank with the lines in the water; these had been carried by the current as far as the lengths of gut would permit.

"Haul up that one. I'll try this," said Perigal.

Mavis did as she was told, to find there was something sufficiently heavy at the end of her line to bend the top joint of her rod.

"I've got a fis.h.!.+" she cried.

"Pull up carefully."

She pulled the line from the water, to find that she had hooked an old boot.

Perigal laughed at her discomfiture.

"It is funny, but you needn't laugh at me," she said, slightly emphasising the "you."

"Never mind. I'll bait your hook, and you must have another shot."

Her newly baited line had scarcely been thrown in the water when she caught a fine roach.

"You'd better have it stuffed," he remarked, as he took it off the hook.

"It's going to stuff me. I'll have it tomorrow for breakfast."

In the next hour, she caught six perch of various sizes, four roach, and a gudgeon. Perigal caught nothing, a fact that caused Mavis to sympathise with his bad luck.

"Next time you'll do all the catching," she said.

"You mean you'll fish with me again?"

"Why shouldn't I?"

"Really, with me?"

"I like fish for breakfast," she said, as she turned from the ardour of his glance.

Presently, when they had "jacked up," as he called it, and walked together across the meadows in the direction of the town, she said little; she replied to his questions in monosyllables. She was wondering at and a little afraid of the accentuated feeling of helplessness in his presence which had taken possession of her. It was as if she had no mind of her own, but must submit her will to the wishes of the man at her side. They paused at the entrance to the churchyard, where he asked:

"And what have you been doing all this time?"

She told him of her visit to the Trivetts.