to be no
answer. We looked around for the two young men who had done this thing,
but they had left the house in an unostentatious manner immediately after
the end of the song.

That was the end of that party. I never saw a party break up so quietly,
and with so little fuss. We never said good-night even to one another.
We came downstairs one at a time, walking softly, and keeping the shady
side. We asked the servant for our hats and coats in whispers, and
opened the door for ourselves, and slipped out, and got round the corner
quickly, avoiding each other as much as possible.

I have never taken much interest in German songs since then.

We reached Sunbury Lock at half-past three. The river is sweetly pretty
just there before you come to the gates, and the backwater is charming;
but don't attempt to row up it.

I tried to do so once. I was sculling, and asked the fellows who were
steering if they thought it could be done, and they said, oh, yes, they
thought so, if I pulled hard. We were just under the little foot-bridge
that crosses it between the two weirs, when they said this, and I bent
down over the sculls, and set myself up, and pulled.

I pulled splendidly. I got well into a steady rhythmical swing. I put
my arms, and my legs, and my back into it. I set myself a good, quick,
dashing stroke, and worked in really grand style. My two friends said it
was a pleasure to watch me. At the end of five minutes, I thought we
ought to be pretty near the weir, and I looked up. We were under the
bridge, in exactly the same spot that we were when I began, and there
were those two idiots, injuring themselves by violent laughing. I had
been grinding away like mad to keep that boat stuck still under that
bridge. I let other people pull up backwaters against strong streams
now.

We sculled up to Walton, a rather large place for a riverside town. As
with all riverside places, only the tiniest corner of it comes down to
the water, so that from the boat you might fancy it was a village of some
half-dozen houses, all told. Windsor and Abingdon are the only towns
between London and Oxford that you can really see anything of from the
stream. All the others hide round corners, and merely peep at the river
down one street: my thanks to them for being so considerate, and leaving
the river-banks to woods and fields and water-works.

Even Reading, though it does its best to spoil and sully and make hideous
as much of