The raillery gave me courage to look into her eyes. I wondered if they
were black, but decided that they were not, since her hair was the colour
of wheat when it is ripening for the sickle and the summer sun falls on it
at eve. And I, who am six feet in my socks, had hardly to lower my eyes to
look into hers. Her face was beautiful beyond all imagining of mine. I had
conjured up visions of Dido enthralled of Aeneas, of Cleopatra bending
Antony to her whim. But the conscious art of my day-dreams had wrought no
such marvel as here I saw in very flesh before me. I felt as one who
drinks deep of some rich and rare vintage, and wonders why the gods have
blessed him so. And further, as small things jostle big things in the
mind, I knew that this was the real queen that had dazzled Joe Braggs.

"What do you call it?" she said, looking down at the fish.

"A jack, or pike, madam."

"'The tyrant of the watery plains,' as Mr. Pope calls him. You've heard
of Mr. Pope, the poet?" She spoke as if 'No' was the inevitable answer.

"Strictly speaking, no, madam," said I gravely, "but I have read his
so-called poems." She frowned. "Horace calls the jack," I continued,
"_lupus_, the wolf-fish, as one may say, and a very good name too.
Doubtless madam has heard of Horace."

My quip brought a glint into her eyes and a richer colour to her cheek.
"Yes, heard of him," she said, with a trace of chagrin in her voice. "And
now, O Nimrod of the watery plains, how far is it to the village smithy?"

"Just under a mile, madam."