He drew from his pocket a small, brown paper parcel.
"I don't mind telling you," he confided as he cut the string, "that
I don't think there's another sport like it in the world. I have
tried most of them, too. When I was a boy I was all for shooting,
perhaps because I could never get enough. Then I had a season or
two at Melton, though I was never much of a horseman. But for real,
unadulterated excitement, for sport that licks everything else into
a cocked hat, give me a strong sea rod, a couple of traces, just
enough sea to keep on the bottom all the time, and the codling
biting. Look here, did you ever see a mackerel spinner like that?"
he added, drawing one out of the parcel which he had untied. "Look
at it, all of you."
Lessingham took it gingerly in his fingers. Philippa, a little
ostentatiously, turned her back upon the two men and took up a
newspaper.
"Lady Cranston does not sympathize with my interest in any sort of
sport just now," Sir Henry explained good-humouredly. "All the
same I argue that one must keep one's mind occupied somehow or
other."
"Quite right, Dad!" Nora agreed. "We must carry on, as the Colonel
says. All the same, I did hope you'd come down in a new naval
uniform, with lots of gold braid on your sleeve. I think they might
have made you an admiral, Daddy, you'd look so nice on the bridge.
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