we had a roof over our heads.

I have known wet summers before and since. I have learnt by many bitter
experiences the danger and foolishness of leaving the shelter of London
any time between the first of May and the thirty-first of October.
Indeed, the country is always associate in my mind with recollections of
long, weary days passed in the pitiless rain, and sad evenings spent in
other people's clothes. But never have I known, and never, I pray night
and morning, may I know again, such a summer as the one we lived through
(though none of us expected to) on that confounded houseboat.

In the morning we would be awakened by the rain's forcing its way through
the window and wetting the bed, and would get up and mop out the saloon.
After breakfast I would try to work, but the beating of the hail upon the
roof just over my head would drive every idea out of my brain, and, after
a wasted hour or two, I would fling down my pen and hunt up Ethelbertha,
and we would put on our mackintoshes and take our umbrellas and go out
for a row. At mid-day we would return and put on some dry clothes, and
sit down to dinner.

In the afternoon the storm generally freshened up a bit, and we were kept
pretty busy rushing about with towels and cloths, trying to prevent the
water from coming into the rooms and swamping us. During tea-time the
saloon was usually illuminated by forked lightning. The evenings we
spent in baling out the boat, after which we took it in turns to go into
the kitchen and warm ourselves. At eight we supped, and from then until
it was time to go to bed we sat wrapped up in rugs, listening to the
roaring of the thunder, and the howling of the wind, and the lashing of
the waves, and wondering whether the boat would hold out through the
night.

Friends would come down to spend the day with us--elderly, irritable
people, fond of warmth and comfort; people who did not, as a rule, hanker
after jaunts, even under the most favourable conditions; but who had been
persuaded by our silly talk that a day on the river would be to them like
a Saturday to Monday in Paradise.

They would arrive soaked; and we would shut them up in different bunks,
and leave them to strip themselves and put on things of Ethelbertha's or
of mine. But Ethel and I, in those days, were slim, so that stout,
middle-aged people in our clothes neither looked well nor felt happy.

Upon their emerging we would take them into the saloon and try to
e