THE CHANCE ENCOUNTER 167 
comment, I fear. But once, happily when he 
was watching me, I made a really good cast over 
a rising trout, just under an overhanging bough. 
The fish rose, was hooked, and played to. the net, 
which he handled for me himself. Altogether 
not a discreditable performance, which caused him 
(in a weak moment !) to exclaim, “I must say 
you did that very well!” His words of approval 
echo pleasantly in my ear to this day, A parson, 
a brother of the angle, once said to me, at a little 
riverside inn in Scotland, “It is the little things 
in life that are so important.” That Lancashire 
vicar had keen insight into human affairs. We 
are apt to get touchy when the wrong thing is 
said, huffed when our sense of importance is (as 
we think) assailed ; our nerves are likely to be 
ruffled when somebody or other seems all out of 
sympathy with our (of course correct) attitude. 
Contrariwise, we cherish—there is a lot of human 
nature in man, to quote the old saying—the golden 
word, said at the right moment. I think the 
charm, the value, of the Major’s companionship 
was that he never laughed at, but always with 
one. The Major would describe himself as “a 
hard case.” Yet he took me across the street 
one day on seeing a poor cripple whom he had 
got to know. “Come along,” he said, “we 
must go and have a talk to that old man; he 
likes any one to have a word with him.” Then 
there was the day on which we were due to fish 
on one of the choicest trout waters in England, 
He received word that an old friend of his was 
