And as they walked along, picking their way among boulders and bracken and heather, he was asking her whether the heart-breaking accidents and bitter disappointments of salmon-fishing were not greater than its rewards; as to which she lightly made answer: 

“You must come and try.  None of the gentlemen here are very eager anglers; I suppose they get enough of salmon-fishing in the spring.  Now if you care about it at all, one rod is always enough for two people, and we could arrange it this way—­that you should take the pools where wading is necessary.  They’ll get a pair of waders for you at the lodge.  At present old Robert does all the wading that is wanted; but of course I don’t care much about playing a fish that has been hooked by somebody else.  Now, you would take the wading pools.”

“Oh, thank you,” said he, “but I’m afraid I should show myself such a duffer.  I used to be a pretty fair trout-fisher when I was a lad,” he went on to say; and then it suddenly occurred to him that the offer of her companionship ought not to be received in this hesitating fashion.  “But I shall be delighted to try my hand, if you will let me; and of course you must see that I don’t disturb the best pools.”

So they passed up through the narrow gorge, where the heavy volume of water was dashing down in tawny masses between the rocks, and got into the open country again, where the strath broadened out in a wide expanse of moorland.  Here the river ran smooth between low banks, bordered now and again by a fringe of birch, and there was a greater quiet prevailing, the farther and farther they got away from the tumbling torrents below.  But when they reached the Long Pool no fishing was possible; the afternoon sun struck full on the calm surface of the water; there was not a breath of wind to stir the smooth-mirrored blue and white; they could do nothing but choose out a heathery knoll on the bank, and sit down and wait patiently for a passing cloud.

“I suppose,” said she, clasping her fingers together in her lap—­“I suppose you are all eagerness about to-morrow morning?”

“Oh, I am not going shooting to-morrow,” said he.

“What!” she exclaimed.  “To be on a grouse-moor on the Twelfth, and not go out?”

“It is because it is the Twelfth; I don’t want to spoil sport,” said he, modestly.  “And I don’t want to make a fool of myself either.  If I could shoot well enough, and if there were a place for me, I should be glad to go out with them; but my shooting is, like my fishing, a relic of boyhood’s days; and I should not like to make an exhibition of myself before a lot of crack shots.”

“That is only false pride”, said she, in her curiously direct, straightforward way.  “Why should you be ashamed to admit that there are certain things you can’t do as well as you can do certain other things?  There is no particular virtue in having been brought up to the use of a gun or rod.  Take your own case.  You are at home on the stage.  There you know everything—­you are the master, the proficient.  But take the crack shots and put them on the stage, and ask them to do the simplest thing—­then it is their turn to be helpless, not to say ridiculous.”