IX 
ON THE FORDS OF TEME 
AVING family and business responsi- 
H bilities at their respective homes, my 
friends from Deptford and Rotherhithe 
at the end of a fortnight had to leave 
Tenbury for the town on the Thames, and I felt 
lonely without them. 
With water low, as indeed it had been so 
long, they had not had much chance of sport ; 
yet they had been happy every day, every hour, 
of their holiday, and their sense of enjoyment 
communicated itself to all round about them. 
They left just when heavy rain had been falling. 
With the water now fining, and with prospect 
of sharp frosts, the grayling would be sure to 
come on the feed. Verily, in three days or so, 
sport began. Two other angling visitors came— 
from Stroud, in Gloucestershire—but as soon as 
the Teme looked “topping,” as the modern 
phrase has it, one of them had toreturn. The 
other was luckily able to stay two days longer, 
and one of these we spent together on the 
association length. 
