206 MOSTLY ABOUT TROUT 



holiday of four, looked forward to for months. 

 If this goes on there is nothing for it but to tear 

 up this account and pocket the fountain pen. 

 It is permitted to share our joys with others. 

 We must keep our tragedies under bushels, or 

 their present-day equivalents. . . . 



What ages it seems since our whole world 

 was bounded by rattling windows, with rain- 

 squalls driving against the streaming panes ! 

 It could not have been only yesterday morn- 

 ing. In the evening Nature's great magician 

 got to work. The sun burst through the clouds, 

 the wind drove them in rolling billows up the 

 valleys, the headlands stood out, and Lundy 

 Island suddenly appeared again on the horizon, 

 dimly outlined in soft blues and greys. We 

 had a sunset, unpaintable, but describable in 

 prose, as only Ruskin could have described it. 



To-day has come the dawn of summer. 

 Warm zephyrs waft the scent of honeysuckle, 

 diluted with ozone from the sea beach, into 

 widely opened windows. The landscape is a 

 blaze of colour, grass of the emerald-green of 

 the West of England and of Ireland ; patches 

 of ripening corn show yellow in the little 

 fieldlets between the high hedges on the hill- 

 side, and Saunton Hill is gay again with wild 

 flowers, purple, yellow, orange, red and blue- 



