The Seven Darlings
and caught one of the grayish flies that were tickling the appetite of the big trout.

This fly had a body no bigger than a gnat's.

Pritchard handed Gay a box of japanned tin. It was divided into compartments, and each compartment was half full of infinitesimal trout flies.[Pg 69] They were so small that you had to use a pair of tweezers in handling them.

[Pg 69]

Pritchard spread his handkerchief on the grass, and Gay dumped the flies out on it and spread them for examination. And then, their heads very close together, they began to hunt for one which would match the live one that Pritchard had caught.

"But they're too small," Gay objected. "The hooks would pull right through a trout's lip."

"Not always," said Pritchard. "How about this one?"

"Too dark," said Gay.

"Here we are then—a match or not?"

The natural fly and the artificial placed side by side were wonderfully alike.

"They're as like as Lee and me," said Gay.

"Lee?"

"Three of us are triplets," she explained. "We look exactly alike—and we never forgive people who get us mixed up."

Pritchard abandoned all present thoughts of trout-fishing by scientific methods. He looked into her face with wonder.

"Do you mean to tell me," said he, "that there are two other D-D-Darlings exactly like you?"

"Exactly—a nose for a nose; an eye for an eye."

[Pg 70]

[Pg 70]

"It isn't true," he proclaimed. "There is nobody in the whole world in the least like you."


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