They reached Eagle Rock well before noon, unsaddled their horses, removed the generous bundles of lunch from the back of the willing pack-pony, and turned all four out to graze. Above them rose abruptly a huge gray mass of granite, set in the midst of a smooth slope of grass and scrubby trees. A clear stream swept in a curve below the foot of the rock, spread to a broad pool, and then ran babbling out of sight among the trees. Hester, who was, in her own sphere, a capable and self-reliant young person, showed them how to hobble the horses lest they stray too far, how to build a fireplace of stones with its back to the wind, and then brought out her fishing tackle and set about teaching the two girls how to catch rainbow trout.
Beatrice succeeded very badly, displaying a great talent for tangling her hook in the bushes when she tried to learn to cast. She laid down her rod after a little, stretched herself upon her back on the warm grass, and fell to watching the fleet of towering white clouds that went drifting overhead. One of them, which looked even more than the others like a tall vessel with curved and shining sails, had come to grief on the jagged shoulder of Gray Cloud Mountain and hung there, beating itself to pieces, growing thinner and thinner as it spread out in long wreaths across the glowing blue sky. Some of Beatrice’s cares and worries seemed to be fading from her mind in much the same way, blown afar by the brisk, warm gusts of wind.
“I believe everything will come out right after all,” she thought, “and I shall know, when the time comes, what I ought to do.”
She got up at last and went to join the others, who greeted her with reproaches for having made so little effort to catch any fish.
Nancy, more patient and painstaking, had come into better fortune. She had learned to cast, after a fashion, and had managed to dangle her gay-colored fly in the water at the edge of a riffle just as Hester had instructed her. Then came the first tug at her line, a magic quiver which seemed to send an electric shock of excitement all up her arm. In that second she became a fisherman.
They landed twelve trout between them, although Hester’s share was by far the greater, and they ate all twelve for the lunch that they spread on a flat, sun-warmed shelf of Eagle Rock. Such a feast as it was, with sizzling fried bacon, toasted cheese sandwiches, hot cocoa, and the trout cooked to a turn by Hester. Afterward they sat and talked for a very long time, talked of everything and of nothing, until Hester jumped up and said there was only just time for a swim before going home.