Phyllis, to be exact, was five minutes early for her appointment. This gave her time to get a boat into the water without displaying awkwardness to any one but herself—also, to slip the oars over the thole-pins and to accustom herself to the idea of handling them. She had taken coaching the night before from Lee and Gay, sitting on a bearskin rug in front of the fire, and swaying rhythmically forward and back.

As Herring was no fisherman, her sisters advised her to row very slowly. "Tell him," they said, "that a boat rushing through water alarms fish more than anything in the world."

She told him when he was seated in the stern of the boat facing her.

"You mustn't mind going very slow," she said. "The fish in this part of the Adirondacks are noted for their sensitiveness in general and their acute sense of hearing in particular. Why, if I were to row as fast as I can"—there must have been a twinkle in her eyes—"trout miles away would be frightened out of their skins," and she added mentally, "and I should upset this horribly wabbly boat into the bargain."

They proceeded at a snail's pace, Phyllis dabbing the water gingerly with her oars, with something of that caution and repulsion with which one turns over a dead snake with a stick—to see if it is dead.

The grips of guide-boat oars overlap. And your hands follow rather than accompany each other from catch to finish, and from finish to catch. If you are careless, or not to the stroke born or trained, you occasionally knock little chunks of skin and flesh from your knuckles.

Herring watched Phyllis's gentle and restrained efforts with inscrutable eyes.

"I never could understand," he said, "how you fellows manage to row at all with that sort of an outfit. At Harvard they only give you one oar and let you take both hands to it, and then you can't row. At least, I couldn't. They put me right out of the boat. They said I caught crabs. As a matter of fact, I didn't. All I did was to sit there, and every now and then the handle of my oar banged me across the solar plexus."

"We're not going far, you know," said Phyllis (and she mastered the desire to laugh). "Hadn't you—ah—um—better put your rod together?"

"Oh, I can do that!" said Herring. "You begin with the big piece and you stick the next-sized piece into that, and so on. And I know how to put the reel on, because the man in the store showed me, and I know how to run the line through the rings."

"Well," said Phyllis, "that's more than half the battle."

"And," Herring continued, "he showed me how to tie on the what-you-may-call-it and the flies."

"Good!" said Phyllis.

"And, of course," he concluded, "I've forgotten."

Now, Phyllis had been shown how to tie flies to a leader only the night before, and she, also, had forgotten.