ed, fearlessly laughing as she passed them.

Robert was ready to plunge in to stem her progress, lest she should meet
with some perilous eddy, but Owen laid hold on him, saying, 'Don't be
nervous, she's all right; only giving trouble, after the nature of women.
There; are you satisfied?' he called to her, as she came to a stop
against a reed bed, with a tall fence interposed between boat and
passengers. 'A nice ferry-woman you.'

'Come and get me up again,' was all her answer.

'Serve you right if I never picked you up till London-bridge,' he
answered. 'Stand clear, Fulmort,' and with a run and a bound, he vaulted
over the high hedge, and went crackling through the nodding bulrushes and
reed-maces; while Lucy, having accomplished pulling up one of the latter,
was pointing it lancewise at him, singing,

'With a bulrush for his spear, and a thimble for a hat,
Wilt thou fight a traverse with the castle cat.'

'Come, come; 'tis too squashy here for larking,' he said authoritatively,
stepping into the boat, and bringing it up with such absence of effort
that when a few minutes after he had brought it to the landing-place, and
the freight was seated, Robert had no sooner taken the other oar than he
exclaimed at the force of the stream with which Owen had dealt so easily,
and Lucilla so coolly.

'It really was a fearful risk,' he said reproachfully to her.

'Oh!' she said, 'I know my Thames, and my Thames knows me!'

'Now's the time to improve it,' said Owen; 'one or other should preach
about young ladies getting loose, and not knowing where they may be
brought up.'

'But you see I did know; besides, Phoebe's news from Paris will be better
worth hearing,' said Lucilla, tickling her friend's face with the soft
long point of her dark velvety mace.

'My news from Paris?'

'For shame, Phoebe! Your face betrays you.'

'Lucy; how could you know? I had not even told Miss Charlecote!'

'It's true! it's true!' cried Lucilla. 'That's just what I wanted to
know!'

'Lucy, then it was not fair,' said Phoebe, much discomposed. 'I was
desired to tell no one, and you should not have betrayed me into doing
so.'

'Phoebe, you always were a green oasis in a wicked world!'

'And now, let me hear,' said Miss Charlecote. 'I can't flatter you,
Phoebe; I thought you were labouring under a suppressed secret.'

'Only since this morning,' pleaded Phoebe, earnestly; 'and we were
expressly forbidden to mention it; I can