Any room for me, Miss Grant?" I asked boldly.

"Why, yes!" she smiled eagerly, "if only you would come. You promised
once, you know, but, somehow, that promise is still unfulfilled."

I handed her into the boat, pushed off and leaped in beside her. She
took the oars and, with the swift easy strokes, full of power and
artistic grace, which I had noticed the first time I saw her on the
water, she pulled out to the west of Rita's Isle.

Her hair was hanging negligently, in loose, wavy curls, over her
shoulders. Her dimpled arms and her neck were bared to the sunshine.
Her mouth was parted slightly and her teeth shone ivory-like, as she
plied her oars.

"Let me take a turn now," I asked, "and run out your line."

She did so, and I took her slowly round the Island without her feeling
so much as a tiny nibble.

"How stupid!" I exclaimed. "What's the good of me coming out here, if
I do not try to discover the cause of your continual non-success as a
fisher? Pull in your line and let me have a look at the spoon."

I examined the sinker and found it of the proper weight and properly
adjusted, fixed at the correct length from the bait. Next, I took the
spoon in my hand. It was a small nickel spinner,--the right thing for
catching sea-trout round Rita's Isle. I was puzzled for a little,
until I laid the spoon and the hook flat on the palm of my hand, then I
knew where the trouble was.

The barb of the hook hung fully an inch and a half too far from the
spoon.

I adjusted it and handed it back to my lady-companion.

"Try that," I said with a smile.

In dropped the line and out it ran to its full length.

Miss Grant held it taut. Suddenly she gave it a jerk. She stopped in
breathless excitement. Then she jerked again.

"Oh, dear me!" she cried anxiously, "there's something on."

"Pull it in," I shouted, "steady,--not too quickly."

Immediately thereafter, a fine, two-pound trout lay flopping in the
bottom of the boat.

"Just think of that," cried my fair troller, "my first fish! And all
by moving up a foolish little hook an inch or so."

Her eyes were agleam. She chatted on and on almost without ceasing,
almost without thinking, so excited and absorbed did she become in the
sport.

Back went the line, and in it came again with another wriggling,
shining trout.

For an hour I rowed round the Island, and, in that hour, Mary Grant had
equalled Rita's best that I knew of, for between thirty and forty