lad, that's just what he did do, and there's your
fee for assisting him to do it." Saying which, my dripping friend, who
had now scrambled upon deck, leant over, and following Amenda's excellent
example, expressed his feelings upon the boy's head.

There was one comforting reflection about the transaction as a whole, and
that was that the ferry-boy had at last received a fit and proper reward
for his services. I had often felt inclined to give him something
myself. I think he was, without exception, the most clumsy and stupid
boy I have ever come across; and that is saying a good deal.

His mother undertook that for three-and-sixpence a week he should "make
himself generally useful" to us for a couple of hours every morning.

Those were the old lady's very words, and I repeated them to Amenda when
I introduced the boy to her.

"This is James, Amenda," I said; "he will come down here every morning at
seven, and bring us our milk and the letters, and from then till nine he
will make himself generally useful."

Amenda took stock of him.

"It will be a change of occupation for him, sir, I should say, by the
look of him," she remarked.

After that, whenever some more than usually stirring crash or
blood-curdling bump would cause us to leap from our seats and cry: "What
on earth has happened?" Amenda would reply: "Oh, it's only James, mum,
making himself generally useful."

Whatever he lifted he let fall; whatever he touched he upset; whatever he
came near--that was not a fixture--he knocked over; if it was a fixture,
it knocked _him_ over. This was not carelessness: it seemed to be a
natural gift. Never in his life, I am convinced, had he carried a
bucketful of anything anywhere without tumbling over it before he got
there. One of his duties was to water the flowers on the roof.
Fortunately--for the flowers--Nature, that summer, stood drinks with a
lavishness sufficient to satisfy the most confirmed vegetable toper:
otherwise every plant on our boat would have died from drought. Never
one drop of water did they receive from him. He was for ever taking them
water, but he never arrived there with it. As a rule he upset the pail
before he got it on to the boat at all, and this was the best thing that
could happen, because then the water simply went back into the river, and
did no harm to any one. Sometimes, however, he would succeed in landing
it, and then the chances were he would spill it over the deck or