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Well, it sounded rather refreshing, though I confess that, until Tish mentioned it, I had always thought that fish leaped in the evening to catch mosquitoes.

We sent for Hutchins at once. She was always respectful, but never subservient. She stood in the doorway while Tish explained.

“How far north?” she said crisply. Tish told her. “We’ll have no cut-and-dried destination,” she said. “There’s a little steamer goes up the river I have in mind. We’ll get off when we see a likely place.”

“Are you going for trout or bass?”

Tish was rather uncertain, but she said bass on a chance, and Hutchins nodded her approval.

“If it’s bass, I’ll go,” she said. “I’m not fond of trout-fishing.”

“We shall have a motor boat. Of course I shall not take the car.”

Hutchins agreed indifferently. “Don’t you worry about the motor boat,” she said. “Sometimes they go, and sometimes they don’t. And I’ll help round the camp; but I’ll not wash dishes.”

“Why not?” Tish demanded.

“The reason doesn’t really matter, does it? What really concerns you is the fact.”

Tish stared at her; but instead of quailing before Tish’s majestic eye she laughed a little.

“I’ve camped before,” she said. “I’m very useful about a camp. I like to cook; but I won’t wash dishes. I’d like, if you don’t mind, to see the grocery order before it goes.”

Well, Aggie likes to wash dishes if there is plenty of hot water; and Hannah, Tish’s maid, refusing to go with us on account of Indians, it seemed wisest to accept Hutchins’s services.

Hannah’s defection was most unexpected. As soon as we reached our decision, Tish ordered beads for the Indians; and in the evenings we strung necklaces, and so on, while one of us read aloud from the works of Cooper. On the second evening thus occupied, Hannah, who is allowed to come into Tish’s sitting-room in the evening and knit, suddenly burst into tears and refused to go.

“My scalp’s as good to me as it is to anybody, Miss Tish,” she said hysterically; and nothing would move her.

She said she would run no risk of being cooked over her own camp-fire; and from that time on she would gaze at Tish for long periods mournfully, as though she wanted to remember how she looked when she was gone forever.

Except for Hannah, everything moved smoothly. Tish told Charlie Sands about the plan, and he was quite enthusiastic.

“Great scheme!” he said. “Eat a broiled black bass for me. And take the advice of one who knows: don’t skimp on your fishing-tackle. Get the best. Go light on the canned goods, if necessary; but get the best reels and lines on the market. Nothing in life hurts so much,” he said impressively, “as to get a three-pound bass to the top of the water and have your line break. I’ve had a big fellow get away like that and chase me a mile with its thumb on its nose.” This last, of course, was purely figurative.

He went away whistling. I wish he had been less optimistic. When we came back and told him the whole story, and he sat with his mouth open and his hair, as he said, crackling at the roots, I reminded him with some bitterness that he had encouraged us. His only retort was to say that the excursion itself had been harmless enough; but that if three elderly ladies, church members in good standing, chose to become freebooters and pirates the moment they got away from a corner policeman, they need not blame him.

The last thing he said that day in June was about fishing-worms.

“Take ’em with you,” he said. “They charge a cent apiece for them up there, assorted colors, and there’s something stolid and British about a Canadian worm. The fish aren’t crazy about ’em. On the other hand, our worms here are–er–vivacious, animated. I’ve seen a really brisk and on-to-its-job United States worm reach out and clutch a bass by the gills.”