72 AN ANGLER'S BASKET. 



ways very well. When he gives me as an excuse for going 

 into town again in the evening an important committee 

 meeting on Church matters, or that it is lodge night, or that 

 there is a very old friend from Australia at the club, or that 

 he promised to attend a meeting for the purpose of raising a 

 fund for decayed anglers, I am afraid I no more believe him 

 than I do when he comes home from fishing on a January 

 night, drenched to the skin and perished with cold, and says 

 he has had first-rate sport, but, knowing I do not care for 

 grayling, he has given them all to a sick friend. Do you 

 think he has ? That is what I want to know, because, though 

 I do not believe there is a man breathing who can lay his 

 hand on his heart and tell his wife he never told her a fib (as 

 Mrs. Caudle reminded her husband), yet I do believe Frank 

 does not tell me fibs, and it is only when I see what 

 exaggerators fishermen seem to be that I get a little 

 doubtful. Secondly, I want to know why you men are to 

 have all the sport of fishing to yourselves ? You permit us, 

 out of your great condescension, to play an occasional game 

 at billiards with you, and you are glad enough to get us to 

 join you at tennis. I do not think we should look very 

 elegant at cricket or on the football field, but, from what 

 you write about angling, it would seem to be a sport in which 

 we could join without any loss of womanly grace or dignity, 

 and it is a sport anybody can manage. We should be at a 

 disadvantage, as usual, with you men, because Frank has 

 some horrid things he calls "waders," and I suppose it 

 would be quite out of the question for us to wear them. I 

 sometimes think you lords of Creation arrange your sports 

 on purpose to keep us out. Before I conclude I must tell 

 you that only once in eighteen months of our married life has 

 my husband brought any fish home, and that one fish looked 

 very like an ordinary herring with all the scales scraped off. 

 Cook said it was a herring, but Frank laughed, and insisted 

 it was a trout, though I must admit it tasted like herring. 



