we had now come into the stone-country, in which every house
must be either built, walls and roof, of grey stone or be a blot on the
landscape.

We still rowed on after this, Ellen taking the sculls in my boat; we
passed a weir a little higher up, and about three miles beyond it came by
moonlight again to a little town, where we slept at a house thinly
inhabited, as its folk were mostly tented in the hay-fields.

CHAPTER XXVIII: THE LITTLE RIVER

We started before six o'clock the next morning, as we were still twenty-
five miles from our resting place, and Dick wanted to be there before
dusk. The journey was pleasant, though to those who do not know the
upper Thames, there is little to say about it. Ellen and I were once
more together in her boat, though Dick, for fairness' sake, was for
having me in his, and letting the two women scull the green toy. Ellen,
however, would not allow this, but claimed me as the interesting person
of the company. "After having come so far," said she, "I will not be put
off with a companion who will be always thinking of somebody else than
me: the guest is the only person who can amuse me properly. I mean that
really," said she, turning to me, "and have not said it merely as a
pretty saying."

Clara blushed and looked very happy at all this; for I think up to this
time she had been rather frightened of Ellen. As for me I felt young
again, and strange hopes of my youth were mingling with the pleasure of
the present; almost destroying it, and quickening it into something like
pain.

As we passed through the short and winding reaches of the now quickly
lessening stream, Ellen said: "How pleasant this little river is to me,
who am used to a great wide wash of water; it almost seems as if we shall
have to stop at every reach-end. I expect before I get home this evening
I shall have realised what a little country England is, since we can so
soon get to the end of its biggest river."

"It is not big," said I, "but it is pretty."

"Yes," she said, "and don't you find it difficult to imagine the times
when this little pretty country was treated by its folk as if it had been
an ugly characterless waste, with no delicate beauty to be guarded, with
no heed taken of the ever fresh pleasure of the recurring seasons, and
changeful weather, and diverse quality of the soil, and so forth? How
could people be so cruel to themselves?"

"And to each other," said I. Then a sudden reso