In less than a minute I
was in the water, looking up at the sky and hearing the birds sing. Talk
about luxury! After breakfast I took Elizabeth out to show her my
progress.

"It looks nice," she said, "and how easily you did it!"

It took me four memorable mornings to finish the asparagus-bed, and,
proud as I was of the job, I resigned, after that, in favor of William.
The brazen trumpets of the sky even at high noon could not phase W.
Deegan. Often in July I have sat in the maple shade, with pride watching
him carry out my directions concerning weeds and potato-bugs. I admired
and honored William. I have the greatest respect for honorable toil, but
even more for callithump.

Sometimes in the early morning I went trout-fishing. There is more
fascination and less waste tissue in that. I would creep down while the
house was still and get my rod and basket, and take a sheltered lane
that was like a green tunnel through the woods, where the birds were
just tuning up for a concert, then out across the "bean-lot," to strike
the brook at about the head of navigation--for trout.

They were plenty enough and just of the right size--that is to say,
eight to eleven inches long--and easy enough to get if one was very
careful. You could not cast for them; the brook was too small and
brushy for that. You had to use a very short line, and wind it around
the end of the rod, and work it through the branches, and then
carefully, very carefully, unwind and let the hook drop lightly on the
water. Then as likely as not there would be a swift, tingling tug, and,
if you were lucky, an instant later you would have a beautiful
red-speckled fellow landed among the grass and field flowers, his gay
colors glancing in the sun.

The open places also required maneuvering. One does not walk up to the
bank and fish for wild trout--not in a stream that is as clear as glass
and where every fish in it can see the slightest movement on the bank.
To fish such a place is to lie flat on the stomach and work forward inch
by inch through the grass, Indian fashion, until the water is in reach.
Even then you must not look, but feel, unwinding the line slowly,
slowly, until the fly or worm taps the water. Then if you have done it
well and the trout is there, and it is June, there will be
results--sharp, quick, sudden results that insure the best breakfast in
the world--hot fried trout, fresh from a New England brook.

The Joy went with me on some of these e