110 THE TROUT ARE RISING 
motor-bicycle over the bridge but the Major— 
none other than my companion at Dulverton, 
Lifton, Longnor, Langholm and Canonbie? I 
sang to myself an anthem of thanksgiving. He 
had, it appeared, ridden from Devonshire to 
the Worcestershire-Shropshire border. Almost 
simultaneously with his arrival, there appeared at 
the hotel two other brethren of the angle. One 
was a Major who had lost his left arm (the result 
of one of his four wounds in the war), but was 
none the less one of the best fly-fishermen you 
would meet in a day’s march. The other was a 
demobilized officer, whose cheery humour will 
long be remembered in the hotel. We had a 
table together, and when I listened to that trio, 
with their sparkling, boyish fun, I bethought me 
of the song which says, “For it’s always fair 
weather when good fellows get together.” 
Fishing for grayling! We fished every 
moment possible, fished again at meals (and they 
were meals!) and fished again in the smoking- 
room. “How horribly monotonous must the 
conversation have been!” remarks a reader who 
does not fish, and I concede that there are other 
interesting subjects besides grayling. Still, the 
talk was not entirely about fins and tails, for even 
ardent fishermen cannot live conversationally on 
a menu of nothing but piscatorial instances. But 
I fear that, even when things in general were 
being discussed, there was a tendency for fish 
to creep in somewhere. As, however, all four 
were in complete sympathy, nobody was bored. 
