re, Dick, my boy," said the Colonel sententiously, fixing
his black-rimmed eyeglass under the bushy white brow that shaded his
right eye; "don't you let him entice you into that business. Don't
pay nowadays! All the shipping goes up North, y'know. The poor old
Thames is only used for regattas now, and penny steamers."

"How very nice for the Thames!" cried Eve. "Why, there's nothing I
like more than regattas! I do so hope we shall go to Henley this
year; but houseboats are so expensive, and it's no fun unless you
have a houseboat. We had a punt last year, a sort of thing like a
long butler's tray, and Charles got into fearful difficulties. You
know, it looks so easy to push a punt along with a pole, but the
pole has a wicked way of sticking in the mud at critical
moments--when they are clearing the course, for instance. Oh, it was
dreadful! Everybody was looking at us, and I felt like one of those
horrid people who always get in the way at the Oxford and Cambridge
boat-race!"

"Or the Derby dog, by Jove!" suggested the Colonel.

"I can sympathize with you fully, Miss Sylvester," said his nephew.
"I shouldn't like to say how many times in the course of my first
summer term at Oxford I found myself sprawling ignominiously in the
Cherwell, instead of posing in a picturesque attitude in the stern
of my punt. And one looked such a fool going up to college in wet
things. But there aren't many regattas going on in the regions below
London Bridge nowadays. It's not much like Henley or Marlow, though
it's pretty enough in its way at times. You ought to get Rainham to
invite you to the dock; you would create an impression on the
natives, and of course he would be delighted. He's got a most
amiable housekeeper, though I don't think she has heard of thin
bread-and-butter; and I have discovered that his foreman is a judge
of art--a regular Ruskin."

"And how is poor Philip, Mr. Lightmark?" asked Mrs. Sylvester
tentatively. "You must bring him here very soon, and make him give
an account of himself."

"Oh," said Lightmark vaguely, "he's looking pretty fit, though he
doesn't like to be told so. I really believe he would be unhappy if
he were in robust health. He finds his damaged lung such a good
pretext for neglecting the dock; and if it got quite well, half the
occupation of his life would be gone."

Mrs. Sylvester and Eve both protested laughingly against this
somewhat heartless view of the case; and after declining an offe