“ ’Tain’t what you’d call fishing, Mister. Nought but minnies and stickles, ’cept when us do go to Willum’s Mill. Woops-I! But them girt chub be hard to hook. And Mister Manley he likes to keep them for the gentry. ’Tis when us be down to Willum’s of an evening, when farmer be feeding ’isself, that Bob and me do a bit of real fishing.”

Wolf surveyed the good-looking urchin with benevolent irony. “Have you ever landed any of those big chub?” he asked. And then he suddenly became conscious that the nervous, hunted eye of a very shabby clergyman was observing them both, with startled interest, from the edge of the pavement.

“We’re near where us wants to go now, Sir,” was the boy’s irrelevant response, uttered in a surprisingly loud voice.