IX 

 ON THE FORDS OF TEME 



HAVING family and business responsi- 

 bilities at their respective homes, my 

 friends from Deptford and Rotherhithe 

 at the end of a fortnight had to leave 

 Ten bury for the town on the Thames, and I felt 

 lonely without them. 



With water low, as indeed it had been so 

 long, they had not had much chance of sport ; 

 yet they had been happy every day, every hour, 

 of their holiday, and their sense of enjoyment 

 communicated itself to all round about them. 

 They left just when heavy rain had been falling. 

 With the water now fining, and with prospect 

 of sharp frosts, the grayling would be sure to 

 come on the feed. Verily, in three days or so, 

 sport began. Two other angling visitors came 

 from Stroud, in Gloucestershire but as soon as 

 the Teme looked " topping," as the modern 

 phrase has it, one of them had to return. The 

 other was luckily able to stay two days longer, 

 and one of these we spent together on the 

 association length. 



