houses
and a single factory chimney. Right astern, over Mr. Bossom's shoulder,
rose the clustered chimneys, tall stacks, church spires of the dreadful
town, already wreathed in smoke. It seemed to Tilda, although here were
meadows and clean waterflags growing by the brink, and a wide sky all
around, that yet this ugly smoke hung on their wake and threatened them.

"Why are we stoppin'?" she demanded again, as Sam Bossom, with a hurried
if friendly nod, resumed his calculations.

"And four is fifteen, and fifteen is one-an'-three," said he. "Which,"
he added, looking up as one who would stand no contradiction, "is the
'alf of two-an'-six . . . You'll excuse me, missy, but business first
an' pleasure afterwards. We're stoppin' here for the day."

"For the day?" echoed Tilda, with a dismayed look astern. "An' we've
on'y come this far!"

"Pretty good goin', _I_ should call it," Mr. Bossom assured her
cheerfully. "Six locks we've passed while you was asleep, not countin'
the stop-lock. But maybe you 're not used to travel by canal?"

"I thank the Lord, no; or I'd never 'ave put Mr. 'Ucks up to it.
Why, I'd _walk_ it quicker, crutch an' all."

"What'd you call a reas'nable price for eggs, now--at this time o'
year?" asked Mr. Bossom, abstractedly sucking the stump of a pencil and
frowning at his notebook. But of a sudden her words seemed to strike
him, and he looked up round-eyed.

"You ain't tellin' me _you_ put this in 'Ucks's mind?"

"'Course I did," owned Tilda proudly.

"An' got me sent to Stratford-on-Avon!" Mr. Bossom added. "Me that
stood your friend when _you_ was in a tight place!"

"No, I didn'. It was 'Ucks that mentioned Stratford--said you'd find a
cargo of beer there, which sounded all right: an' Mortimer jumped at it
soon as ever he 'eard the name. Mortimer said it was the dream of his
youth an' the perspiration of his something else--I can't tell the ezact
words; but when he talked like that, how was I to guess there was
anything wrong with the place?"

"There ain't anything wrong wi' the _place_, that I know by," Mr. Bossom
admitted.

"But I remember another thing he said, because it sounded to me even
funnier. He said, 'Sweet swan of Avon upon the banks of Thames, that
did so please Eliza and our James.' Now what did he mean by that?"

Mr. Bossom considered and shook his head.

"Some bank-'oliday couple, I reckon; friends of his, maybe. But about
that swan--Mortimer must 'a-be