Everybody was happy. Mother was out and round the
village with her Christmas gifts, attended by one of our men and a cart
packed with good things. Nothing could have made her happier. Jack and
Kate were in the house-place busy with all sorts of housewiferies, in
which he was as interested as she. Joe and Jane were in the kitchen, as
merry as grigs. I went into my own room, across the passage from the
parlour, sacrosanct to me, my books and my belongings.
There, too, was the great jack, set up to the very life by the skilful
hand of Master Whatcot. He appeared to be cleaving a bunch of reeds to
pounce on a dace, just as he had done once too often on that memorable
day. Brothers of the angle had made pilgrimages to see him from thirty
miles round, and it was an added charm to fancy that the monster had been
caught in a spot where Izaak Walton had fished as a boy, he having been
born and bred in these parts. My jack is a famous jack, for the curious
reader will find an account of him, with his dimensions and catching
weight exactly given, in Master Joshua Spindler's folio volume entitled
"Rudimenta Piscatoria, or the Whole Art of Angling set forth in a Series
of Letters from a Nobleman to his Son," London, 1751.
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