22 FISHING IN EDEN 



sympathetic. He got quite a lot of unpaid work 

 out of us in one way or another, exen to the extent 

 of dressing the great granite millstones when they 

 had been jacked out of their beds in winter time. 

 We used also to turn the oats on the mill drying- 

 kiln, with great wooden coal rakes, and it was on 

 this kiln that we occasionally stripped naked and 

 dried our clothes after a fall into the river. We 

 were not much concerned with shrinkage, and our 

 young, growing legs were usually stuck so far 

 through our trousers that an odd inch or two, more 

 or less, shrivelled up on the hot iron floor of the 

 kiln, was not sufficiently noticeable at home to call 

 for parental comment. 



Work and play supplemented each other. Too 

 much play might have palled on the mind, although 

 I do not say that we at that time thought so. 



There was no Board of Conservators on the 

 Eden then, and one could do pretty much as one 

 liked. In summer time one of our great pleasures 

 was to organise trout-grappling expeditions up the 

 tributary becks of the Eden. We knew every 

 " hold " under sod and stone where good trout 

 lurked, watching through their little doorways for 

 the fish food that came floating down. Stripped 

 to the waist, or with our shirt sleeves rolled up, 

 we jumped from bank to bank and stone to stone, 



