ped on board the houseboat. Her sketch
was promising; judging from the stillness, she supposed Jimson not yet
come; and she had decided to seize occasion and complete the work
of art. Down she sat therefore in the bow, produced her block and
water-colours, and was soon singing over (what used to be called) the
ladylike accomplishment. Now and then indeed her song was interrupted,
as she searched in her memory for some of the odious little receipts
by means of which the game is practised--or used to be practised in the
brave days of old; they say the world, and those ornaments of the world,
young ladies, are become more sophisticated now; but Julia had probably
studied under Pitman, and she stood firm in the old ways.

Gideon, meanwhile, stood behind the door, afraid to move, afraid to
breathe, afraid to think of what must follow, racked by confinement and
borne to the ground with tedium. This particular phase, he felt with
gratitude, could not last for ever; whatever impended (even the gallows,
he bitterly and perhaps erroneously reflected) could not fail to be
a relief. To calculate cubes occurred to him as an ingenious and even
profitable refuge from distressing thoughts, and he threw his manhood
into that dreary exercise.

Thus, then, were these two young persons occupied--Gideon attacking the
perfect number with resolution; Julia vigorously stippling incongruous
colours on her block, when Providence dispatched into these waters a
steam-launch asthmatically panting up the Thames. All along the banks
the water swelled and fell, and the reeds rustled. The houseboat itself,
that ancient stationary creature, became suddenly imbued with life, and
rolled briskly at her moorings, like a sea-going ship when she begins
to smell the harbour bar. The wash had nearly died away, and the quick
panting of the launch sounded already faint and far off, when Gideon was
startled by a cry from Julia. Peering through the window, he beheld
her staring disconsolately downstream at the fast-vanishing canoe.
The barrister (whatever were his faults) displayed on this occasion a
promptitude worthy of his hero, Robert Skill; with one effort of his
mind he foresaw what was about to follow; with one movement of his body
he dropped to the floor and crawled under the table.

Julia, on her part, was not yet alive to her position. She saw she had
lost the canoe, and she looked forward with something less than avidity
to her next interview with Mr B