ll these trees and plants on the day of the
picnic. The others didn't remember them, but Oswald did. He is a boy of
what they call relenting memory.

The anglers were sitting here and there on the shady bank among the
grass and the different flowers I have named. Some had dogs with them,
and some umbrellas, and some had only their wives and families.

We should have liked to talk to them and ask how they liked their lot,
and what kinds of fish there were, and whether they were nice to eat,
but we did not like to.

Denny had seen anglers before and he knew they liked to be talked to,
but though he spoke to them quite like to equals he did not ask the
things we wanted to know. He just asked whether they'd had any luck, and
what bait they used.

And they answered him back politely. I am glad I am not an angler.

It is an immovable amusement, and, as often as not, no fish to speak of
after all.

Daisy and Dora had stayed at home: Dora's foot was nearly well but they
seem really to like sitting still. I think Dora likes to have a little
girl to order about. Alice never would stand it. When we got to Stoneham
Lock Denny said he should go home and fetch his fishing-rod. H. O. went
with him. This left four of us--Oswald, Alice, Dicky, and Noel. We went
on down the towing-path. The lock shuts up (that sounds as if it was
like the lock on a door, but it is very otherwise) between one pen of
the river and the next; the pen where the anglers were was full right
up over the roots of the grass and flowers. But the pen below was nearly
empty.

'You can see the poor river's bones,' Noel said.

And so you could.

Stones and mud and dried branches, and here and there an old kettle or a
tin pail with no bottom to it, that some bargee had chucked in.

From walking so much along the river we knew many of the bargees.
Bargees are the captains and crews of the big barges that are pulled up
and down the river by slow horses. The horses do not swim. They walk
on the towing-path, with a rope tied to them, and the other end to the
barge. So it gets pulled along. The bargees we knew were a good friendly
sort, and used to let us go all over the barges when they were in a good
temper. They were not at all the sort of bullying, cowardly fiends
in human form that the young hero at Oxford fights a crowd of,
single-handed, in books.

The river does not smell nice when its bones are showing. But we went
along down, because Oswald wanted to