e West Branch and meet Edith and
Johnny? They'll be coming home that way, 'laden with trout,' I suppose,"
he ended, sarcastically.

Eleanor began to say, "Oh _no_!" Then something, she didn't know what,
made her say, "Well, all right." As they turned into the wood road that
ran up toward the mountain, she said another unexpected thing:

"Maurice, I'm tired. I'll go home; you go on by yourself, and--and meet
Johnny." She didn't know, herself, why she said it! Perhaps, it was just
an effort to make up for what she had done in the morning?

Maurice, astonished, made some half-hearted protest; he would go back
with her? But she said no, and walked home alone. Her throat ached with
unshed tears. "He _likes_ to be with her! He doesn't want me,--and I
love him--I love him!"

* * * * *

The two youngsters had made a long day of it. On their way to the brook
that morning, crashing through underbrush, climbing rotting rail fences
that were hidden in docks and briers, balancing on the precarious
slipperiness of mossy rocks, the triumphant Johnny, his heart warm with
gratitude to Eleanor, had led his captive and irritated Edith. When they
broke through low-hanging boughs and found the pool, the trout
possibilities of which Johnny had so earnestly "cracked up," Edith was
distinctly grumpy. "Eleanor is a selfish thing," she said. "Gimme a
worm."

"I think Maurice would have been cussedly selfish not to do what she
wanted," Johnny said; "my idea of marriage is that a man must do
everything his wife wants."

"Maurice is never selfish! He's great, simply great!" Edith said.

"Oh, he's decent enough," Johnny admitted, then he paused, frowning, for
he couldn't open his bait box; he banged it on a stone, pried his knife
under the lid, swore at it--and turned very red. Edith giggled.

"Let me try," she said.

"No use; the rotten thing's stuck."

But she took it, shook it, gave an easy twist, and the maddening
lid--loosened, of course, by Johnny's exertions--came off! Edith
shrieked with joy; but Johnny, though mortified, was immensely
relieved. They sat down on a sloping rock, and talked bait, and the
grave and spectacled Johnny became his old self, scolding Edith for
talking so loudly. "Girls," he said, "are _born_ not fishermen!" Then
they waded out into the stream, and began to cast. It was broad daylight
by this time, and the woods were filling with netted sunbeams; the water
whispered and chu