A Summer Idyl 1 1 1 



I only give it as the result of my own experience, the 

 experience of an ignorant Cockney. 



I was introduced to the pike under peculiar cir- 

 cumstances. It used to be my invariable custom to 

 spend about a month in summer in a quiet North- 

 umbrian inn on the banks of the Till. My reasons for 

 doing so I am not obliged to state. Perhaps it was 

 because my friend Tom Burton's father lived in the 

 neighbourhood, perhaps because I have a poet's love 

 of the low blue Cheviot Hills and the silent prosperous 

 district over which they cast their shadow, and as a 

 third perhaps I will say that it possibly may have 

 been tecause Mary Burton, Tom's sister, was the 

 sweetest and loveliest maid on the Borders. Indeed 

 it was through thinking so much of her that ever I 

 came to see the pike at all I say the pike because it 

 is to one particular jack I refer. 



I will explain how it came about. As I am of a 

 reserved disposition and dislike being teased about 

 my affairs, I found it necessary to blind my associates 

 in London as to my real purposes in the North of 

 England, so before I took my second journey, I bought 

 a beautiful trouting-rod and spent a fabulous sum on 

 tackle of various descriptions, and gave out that I had 

 become an enthusiastic angler. Such nonsense as 

 that was to be sure ! But by reading old Walton, I 

 gained enough of knowledge to serve conversational 

 purposes, and when I came home I made no scruple 

 to tell a number of extraordinary stories regarding 



