ANGLING COUSINS AT THE VICARAGE 95 



Fishing, the attractive avant coureur of the Haddon 

 Hall Library. The vicar, who had dissuaded them 

 from end-to-end reading of Halford's standard book 

 because it was strong meat and they were babes (apolo- 

 gising in his cheery way for talking shop in such a 

 connection), dealt out quite the contrary advice about 

 Lord Grey's book, not because the author is an 

 eminent statesman and titled, or because it was the 

 best looking, but by reason of its glamorous word pic- 

 tures of the country. He artfully picked out passages 

 that, having no reference at all to fishing, very poetically 

 touched off the six great blossoms of May, and the 

 singing summer birds easily espied amongst the young 

 leaves and sprouting brushwood ; the long days and 

 warm nights of June, when the wild rose is a beauty to 

 be admired, and the distant masses of elder have a fine 

 foamy appearance. These extracts settled Belinda 

 offhand, and she and Lamia laid their heads together 

 and read the book faithfully. They are good girls, 

 spite of the names selected for them by a fanciful 

 parent, and if they are not proud of those names, and 

 prefer being called by their intimates Blind (with a short 

 "i") and Lammy, there is, I hope, no great harm done. 

 That is better no doubt than the Miss Blinders and Miss 

 Lame-ears of the cottage folk. 



The practical issue of this study of fishing literature 

 (for which also cousin had to pay) and this not-minding 

 of his own parochial business by the vicar (dredging 

 hideous larvae, forsooth, when he ought to be a-fishing 

 of men) may be reckoned at very little change out of a 

 bank note for cousin. It is true that this is a minor 

 matter, and in a measure a somewhat sordid considera- 

 tion. Also, I am anticipating a little. Perhaps I 

 ought to have at once made it clear that the really 

 practical issue of the aforesaid was an insistence on the 



