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."

"I am afraid," her father replied, with his eyes glued upon the
spinner which Lessingham was holding, "that that is a consideration
which didn't seem to weigh with them much. Look at the glitter of
it," he went on, taking up another of the spinners. "You see, it's
got a double swivel, and they guarantee six hundred revolutions a
minute."

"I must plead ignorance," Lessingham regretted, "of everything
connected with mackerel spinning."

"It's fine sport for a change," Sir Henry declared. "The only thing
is that if you strike a shoal one gets tired of hauling the beggars