d in Mr. Dewar's _South Country Trout
Streams_, because they knew most of the Hampshire country so pleasantly
described, and they liked the photographs, one of the two readers being
herself a kodakeer of no mean skill. It was the illustrations, too, of
Mr. Halford's Marryat edition of _Dry Fly Fishing_ that pinned their
attention to that work for at least two hours. They wondered not a
little at the attitude of the dry-fly gentleman as he is photographed
doing the overhand cast, downward cut, steeple cast, and dry-switch,
and under the vicar's tuition fell in love with the Mayfly plate, not
excluding the uncanny larvae likenesses. The reverend monitor, indeed,
proposed that they should drive forthwith over to the Trilling, a chalk
stream tributary at the further limit of the estate, and dredge in the
mud, or whatever their home may be, for the beasts themselves.

To keep to the story, it must be stated that after this interlude the
girls came to Lord Grey's _Fly Fishing_, the attractive _avant coureur_
of the Haddon Hall Library. The vicar, who had dissuaded them from
end-to-end reading of Halford's standard book because it was strong
meat and they were babes (apologising in his cheery way for talking
shop in such a connection), dealt out quite the contrary advice about
Lord Grey's book, not because the author is an eminent statesman and
titled, or because it was the best looking, but by reason of its
glamorous word pictures of the country. He artfully picked out
passages that, having no reference at all to fishing, very poetically
touched off the six great blossoms of May, and the singing summer birds
easily espied amongst the young leaves and sprouting brushwood; the
long days and warm nights of June, when the wild rose is a beauty to be
admired, and the distant masses of elder have a fine foamy appearance.
These extracts settled Belinda offhand, and she and Lamia laid their
heads together and read the book faithfully. They are good girls,
spite of the names selected for them by a fanciful parent, and if they
are not proud of those names, and prefer being called by their
intimates Blind (with a short "i") and Lammy, there is, I hope, no
great harm done. That is better no doubt than the Miss Blinders and
Miss Lame-ears of the cottage folk.

The practical issue of this study of fishing literature (for which also
cousin had to pay) and this not-minding of his own parochial business
by the vicar (dredging hideous