Jean rolled up his trousers above his calf, and his sleeves to his
elbows, that he might get wet without caring; then saying: "Forward!"
he leaped boldly into the first tidepool they came to.

The lady, more cautious, though fully intending to go in too,
presently, made her way round the little pond, stepping timidly, for
she slipped on the grassy weed.

"Do you see anything?" she asked.

"Yes, I see your face reflected in the water."

"If that is all you see, you will not have good fishing."

He murmured tenderly in reply:

"Of all fishing it is that I should like best to succeed in."

She laughed: "Try; you will see how it will slip through your net."

"But yet--if you will?"

"I will see you catch prawns--and nothing else--for the moment."

"You are cruel--let us go a little further; there are none here."

He gave her his hand to steady her on the slippery rocks. She leaned
on him rather timidly, and he suddenly felt himself overpowered by
love and insurgent with passion, as if the fever that had been
incubating in him had waited till to-day to declare its presence.

They soon came to a deeper rift, in which long slender weeds,
fantastically tinted, like floating green and rose-colored hair, were
swaying under the quivering water as it trickled off to the distant
sea through some invisible crevice.

Mme. Rosemilly cried out: "Look, look, I see one, a big one. A very
big one, just there!" He saw it too, and stepped boldly into the pool
though he got wet up to the waist. But the creature, waving its long
whiskers, gently retired in front of the net. Jean drove it toward the
seaweed, making sure of his prey. When it found itself blockaded it
rose with a dart over the net, shot across the mere, and was gone. The
young woman, who was watching the chase in great excitement, could not
help exclaiming: "Oh! Clumsy!"

He was vexed, and without a moment's thought dragged his net over a
hole full of weed. As he brought it to the surface again he saw in it
three large transparent prawns, caught blindfold in their hiding
place.

He offered them in triumph to Mme. Rosemilly, who was afraid to touch
them, for fear of the sharp, serrated crest which arms their heads.
However, she made up her mind to it, and taking them up by the tips of
their long whiskers she dropped them one by one into her creel, with a
little seaweed to keep them alive. Then, having found a shallower pool
of water, she stepped in with some h