When they come to the five-rail fence where the brook runs out of the field, the question is, Over or under? The lowlier method seems safer for the little brother, as well as less conspicuous for persons who desire to avoid publicity until their enterprise has achieved success. So they crawl beneath a bend in the lowest rail,--only tearing one tiny three-cornered hole in a jacket, and making some juicy green stains on the white stockings,--and emerge with suppressed excitement in the field of the cloth of buttercups and daisies.
What an afternoon--how endless and yet how swift! What perilous efforts to leap across the foaming stream at its narrowest points;what escapes from quagmires and possible quicksands; what stealthy creeping through the grass to the edge of a likely pool, and cautious dropping of the line into an unseen depth, and patient waiting for a bite, until the restless little brother, prowling about below, discovers that the hook is not in the water at all, but lying on top of a dry stone,--thereby proving that patience is not the only virtue--or, at least, that it does a better business when it has a small vice of impatience in partnership with it!
