A Summer Idyl 125 



seven and twenty pounds. After getting out I was 

 a new man. 



' You take that fish up to Miss Burton,' I said to 

 the keeper, ' and when you return to the house you'll 

 find your bottle all right. In the meantime I will 

 change my dress.' 



Shortly after, feeling quite fresh and invigorated 

 after the bath, dressed according to my best taste, 

 and with a choice flower in my button-hole, I stepped 

 up to see Mr. Burton, greatly to the confusion and 

 dismay of his daughter, who tried hard to make us 

 believe that she had never meant what she had said. 

 Before leaving the farmhouse that night we had a 

 consultation over the fate of the pike. Mary timidly 

 proposed to stuff him. 



' Stoof him ! Thou'lt stoof none of him,' said her 

 Yorkshire parent. ' Woife, thou'lt have him done for 

 breakfast to-morrow morning, an' a bit o' fat bacon ; 

 and thou'lt come, lad, and help us eat un.' 



Need I say how gladly I promised ? 



I looked in at the keeper's as I was going home 

 that night, and I am sorry to confess that I found 

 him and a crony just finishing the whisky, while he 

 tried incoherently to relate the adventure for the 

 hundredth time. 



The rough winds of autumn had stripped the trees 

 of their tender foliage, and the frosts and floods had 

 swept the weed-beds from the river when I returned 

 to Tillside, to carry thence a bride pure as the snow 



