FullReads

What had the station-master said? It might be an hour–certainly not less than forty minutes–before the train could be restarted. Mr. Molesworth looked at his watch. Forty minutes to explore the road: forty minutes’ holiday! He laughed, pocketed the watch again, and took the road briskly, humming a song.

Suppose he missed his train? Why, then, the Bank must do without him to-day, as it would have to do without him, one of these days, when he was dead. He thought of his fellow-directors’ faces, and laughed again. He felt morally certain of missing that train. What kind of world would it be if money grew in birds’ nests, or if leaves were currency and withered in autumn? Would it include truant-schools for bankers? . . .

“He that is down needs fear no fall,
He that is low, no pride;
He that is humble ever shall
Have God to be his guide.”

“Fulness to such a burden is
That go on pilgrimage–“

Mr. Molesworth did not actually sing these words. The tune he hummed was a wordless one, and, for that matter, not even much of a tune. But he afterwards declared very positively that he sang the sense of them, being challenged by the birds calling in contention louder and louder as the road dipped towards the stream, and by the music of lapsing water which now began to possess his ear. For some five or six furlongs the road descended under beech-boughs, between slopes carpeted with last year’s leaves: but by and by the beeches gave place to an oak coppice with a matted undergrowth of the whortleberry; and where these in turn broke off, and a plantation of green young larches climbed the hill, the wild hyacinths ran down to the stream in sheet upon sheet of blue.

Mr. Molesworth rested his creel on the low hedge above one of these sheets of blue, and with the music of the stream in his ears began to unpack Sir Warwick Moyle’s fishing-rod. For a moment he paused, bethinking himself, with another short laugh, that, without flies, neither rod nor line would catch him a fish. But decidedly fortune was kind to him to-day: for, opening the creel, he found Sir Warwick’s fly-book within it, bulging with hooks and flies by the score–nay, by the hundred. He unbuckled the strap and was turning the leaves to make his choice, when his ear caught the sound of footsteps, and he lifted his eyes to see Sir John Crang coming down the road.

“Hullo!” hailed Sir John. “I saw you slip out of the station and took a fancy that I’d follow. Pretty little out-of-the-way spot, this. Eh? Why, where on earth did you pick up those angling traps?”

“I stole them,” answered Mr. Molesworth deliberately, choosing a fly. He did not in the least desire Sir John’s company, but somehow found himself too full of good-nature to resent it actively.

“Stole ’em?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, they belong to a friend of mine. They were lying ready to hand in the station, and I borrowed them without leave. He won’t mind.”

“You’re a cool one, I must say.” It may be that the recent agitation of his feelings had shaken Sir John’s native vulgarity to the surface. Certainly he spoke now with a commonness of idiom and accent he was usually at pains to conceal. “You must have a fair nerve altogether, for all you’re such a quiet-looking chap. Hadn’t even the curiosity–had you?–to find out what had gone wrong; but just picked up a handy fishing-rod and strolled off to fill up the time till damages were repaired. Look here. Do you know, or don’t you, that ’twasn’t by more than a hair’s-breadth we missed going over that viaduct?”