er
living in the house with that woman Madge--in fact, I won't have it;
but take it all in all, I fear I shall have to make the best of it."

Major Buckley said no more, and soon after they got home. There was
Mrs. Buckley, queenly and beautiful, waiting for her husband; and there
was Mary, pretty, and full of fun; there also was the Doctor, smoking
and contemplating a new fern; and Miss Thornton, with her gloved-hands
folded, calculating uneasily what amount of detriment Mary's complexion
would sustain in consequence of walking about without her bonnet in an
April sun.

One and all cried out to know what sport; and little Sam tottered
forward demanding a fish for himself, which, having got, he at once put
into his mouth head foremost. The Doctor, taking off his spectacles,
examined the contents of the fish-basket, and then demanded:

"Now, my good friend, why do you give yourself the trouble to catch
trout in that round-about way, requiring so much skill and patience? In
Germany we catch them with a net--a far superior way, I assure you. Get
any one of the idle young fellows about the village to go down to the
stream with a net, and they will get more trout in a day than you would
in a week."

"What!" said the Major, indignantly; "put a net in my rented water?--if
I caught any audacious scoundrel carrying a net within half a mile of
it, I'd break his neck. You can't appreciate the delights of
fly-fishing, doctor--you are no sportsman."

"No, I ain't," said the Doctor; "you never said anything truer than
that, James Buckley. I am nothing of the sort. When I was a young man,
I had a sort of brute instinct, which made me take the same sort of
pleasure in killing a boar that a cat does in killing a mouse; but I
have outlived such barbarism."

"Ha! ha!" said the Vicar; "and yet he gave ten shillings for a snipe.
And he's hand-and-glove with every poacher in the parish."

"The snipe was a new species, sir," said the Doctor indignantly; "and
if I do employ the hunters to collect for me, I see no inconsistency in
that. But I consider this fly-fishing mania just of a piece with your
IDIOTIC, I repeat it, IDIOTIC institution of fox-hunting. Why, if you
laid baits poisoned with NUX VOMICA about the haunts of those animals,
you would get rid of them in two years."

The Doctor used to delight in aggravating the Major by attacking
English sports; but he had a great admiration for them nevertheless.

The Major got out his