CLEAR WATERS 



This gentleman was so taken aback, that instead of 

 releasing his hand after the conventional shake, or 

 even saying ' I 'm happy to meet you, sir,' he gripped 

 it fast and held it there, as if concerned lest a 

 side-show that hadn't been mentioned in Baedeker 

 should escape him before he had thoroughly examined 

 it. When his deliberate inspection was concluded he 

 found his tongue. ' I didn't rightly catch your name, 

 sir, but you 've a mighty red head, anyway ! ' and then 

 he released him. I might remark, in extenuation of 

 the Homespun's freedom of manner, that my poppy- 

 headed friend was under twenty at that time. The 

 ladies, however, who are better judges of such things, 

 always maintained that he had the most beautiful hair 

 they had ever seen. Beautiful or otherwise, it ex- 

 pressed his breathless, heady temperament to a fault. 



His first visit to me had been at another fishing- 

 place when he was perhaps eighteen. I didn't know 

 him to speak of at that time and had advised him to 

 bring tackle. So he arrived with a new rod and fly- 

 book. The stream there happened to be steep and 

 torrential, a mass of crags and boulders and deep pools. 

 He was of East Anglian rearing though of Irish blood, 

 and had never beheld such things, nor even a trout. 

 An old ex-keeper took him in hand and told me that 

 he had never seen such a young gentleman in all his 

 life, that he had never laughed so much since he 

 was born, and that his sides still ached. He couldn't 

 keep his feet, the old man said, for thirty consecutive 

 seconds, and at the very start he slid clean over his 

 head into a deep pool. Dick had apparently spent 

 the morning upside down in water of all depths. 

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