30 WATERSIDE SKETCHES. 



Ladies greet us here. I never yet knew the angler who 

 regretted their society by the riverside, and there is one 

 sauntering up the lane who has herself graduated with credit 

 in bank-fishing. They have been rambling, and the children 

 gleefully display the flowers they have gathered. Little 

 Rosebud asks me to accompany her a field or two down 

 the stream to pluck the forget-me-nots her small arm cannot 

 reach. These sunburnt folks are spending their holiday at 

 the old mill-house, and have much to tell me of bird, and 

 beast, and fish. 



Little Rosebud, let me inform you, has often aforetime 

 been my companion at the waterside. She can distinguish 

 a roach from a dace, and a trout from a pike, should the 

 pike happen to be large enough, and she will trot along 

 proud as a queen if allowed to carry the landing net. So, 

 yielding to the fair-haired tempter, I lay aside my rod, and 

 stroll lazily along on the banks of the Brawl, inwardly 

 making observations to guide me in the evening's fishing. 

 Little Rosebud, it seems, has seen a kingfisher, and last 

 night she heard an owl hooting in the pine-wood. A 

 prostrate trunk invites us to spend an idle half-hour in a 

 sweet natural bower, from which we can command a capital 

 view of one of the best bends of the stream. It is the 29fh 

 of May, and it is only meet and fit that the shadows over- 

 head should come from the branches of the tender-leaved 

 oak. Little Rosebud, flushed in the hedge-row out of the 

 heat, sits crowned with flowers, clapping her hands at the 

 large sportive Mayflies on the water. She thus receives 

 her first lesson in entomology, and hears the story of the 

 nautilus, which the insects are imitating. They fall on the 

 water light as snowflakes, spread out their wings like sails, 



