The following paragraphs with reference to the title have been taken from Eben Holden:

Then I got my pole of mountain ash, made hook and line ready, dug some worms and went fishing. I cared not so much for the fishing as for the solitude of the woods. I had a bit of thinking to do. In the thick timber there was a place where Tinkle brook began to hurry and break into murmurs on a pebble bar, as if its feet were tickled. A few more steps and it burst into a peal of laughter that lasted half the year as it tumbled over narrow shelves of rock into a foamy pool. Many a day I had sat fishing for hours at the little fall under a birch tree, among the brakes and moss. No ray of sunlight ever got to the dark water below me— the lair of many a big fish that had yielded to the temptation of my bait. Here I lay in the cool shade while a singular sort of heart sickness came over me. A wild partridge was beating his gong in the near woods all the afternoon. The sound of the water seemed to break in the tree tops and fall back upon me. I had lain there thinking an hour or more when I caught the jar of approaching footsteps. Looking up I saw Jed Feary coming through the bushes, pole in hand.

“Fishin’?” he asked. “Only thinking,” I answered.”Couldn’t be in better business,” said he as he sat down beside me.
More than once he had been my father confessor and I was glad he had come.
“In love?” he asked. “No boy ever thinks unless he’s in love.”
“In trouble,” said I.
“Same thing,” he answered, lighting his pipe. “Love is trouble with a bit of sugar in it—the sweetest trouble a man can have. What’s the matter?”
“It’s a great secret,” I said, “I have never told it. I am in love.” (1.)

1. Eben Holden: Chapter XIV: pp. 164-65