CHAPTER VIII 

 ANGLING COUSINS AT THE VICARAGE 



THE girls seemed to have moderated their zeal for the 

 bicycle, and in truth it was too hot to last. Then they 

 were all for angling, and for this we had to thank cer- 

 tain books recently reviewed and the vicar of Nether- 

 bate. It fell to a useful cousin's lot to purchase the 

 books. The girls were intensely interested in Mr. 

 Dewar's South Country Trout Streams, because they 

 knew most of the Hampshire country so pleasantly 

 described, and they liked the photographs, one of the 

 two readers being herself a kodakeer of no mean skill. 

 It was the illustrations, too, of Mr. Halford's Marryat 

 edition of Dry Fly Fishing that pinned their attention 

 to that work for at least two hours. They wondered 

 not a little at the attitude of the dry-fly gentleman as 

 he is photographed doing the overhand cast, down- 

 ward cut, steeple cast, and dry-switch, and under the 

 vicar's tuition fell in love with the Mayfly plate, not 

 excluding the uncanny larvae likenesses. The reverend 

 monitor, indeed, proposed that they should drive 

 forthwith over to the Trilling, a chalk stream tributary 

 at the further limit of the estate, and dredge in the 

 mud, or whatever their home may be, for the beasts 

 themselves. 



To keep to the story, it must be stated that after 

 this interlude the girls came to Lord Grey's Fly 



