good!" Brydone ejaculated. "That's very good, Hazlewood.
That's good, isn't it, Charlie?"

"Awfully good," agreed the angler.

Their appreciation seemed perfectly genuine, and Guy was touched by the
readiness of them to be entertained by his lame wit.

"I mustn't forget to tell the old man that," Brydone chuckled. "He's
always digging at me over the fish. Done anything with a rod lately? I
knocked down a lot of apples last month. Your governor will like that,
Charlie!"

Guy heard the clink of a tray deposited cautiously on the floor of the
passage outside. He allowed Miss Peasey time to retreat before he opened
the door, because it was one of the clauses in her charter that she was
never, as a lady housekeeper, to be asked to bring a tray into a room
when any one but Guy was present. He hoped that after they had drunk his
visitors would depart; but, alas! the unintended charm of his
conversation seemed likely to prolong their stay.

"Rabelais," Brydone read slowly, as he saw the volumes on the shelves.
"That's a bit thick, isn't it?"

"In quantity or quality, do you mean?" asked Guy.

"I've heard that's the thickest book ever written," said Brydone.

"Do you read old French easily?" asked Guy.

"Oh, it's in old French, is it?" said Brydone, in a disappointed voice.
"That would biff me."

A silence fell upon the room, a silence that seemed to symbolize the
"biffing" of the doctor's son by old French. Willsher took the
opportunity to steer the conversation back to fish, and ten o'clock
struck in the middle of an argument between him and his friend over the
merits of two artificial flies. Guy must be on the Rectory lawn by
eleven o'clock, and he began to be anxious, so animated was the
discussion, about the departure of these well-meaning intruders. He did
not want to plunge straight from their company into the glorious
darkness that would hold Pauline; and he eyed the volume of Keats lying
face downward on the table, hoping he would be allowed to come back to
the knights and ladies praying in their dumb oratories, while he thought
with a thrill of the moment when he should be able to read:

And they are gone; ay, ages long ago
These lovers fled away into the storm.

"If you can't get a chub any other way, you can sometimes get him with a
bit of bacon," Willsher was saying. "And I know a fellow who caught one
of those whoppers under Marston's Mill with a cherry. Fact, I assure
you."

"I know a man at O