a cigar upon a
green plate, or a day old evening paper. The view outside was flooded
with light, and across the corner of it came the head of the acacia,
and at the foot the top of the balcony-railing of hammered iron. In
the foreground was the weltering silver of the river, never quiet and
yet never tiresome. Beyond was the reedy bank, a broad stretch of
meadow land, and then a dark line of trees ending in a group of
poplars at the distant bend of the river, and, upstanding behind them,
a square church tower.

Up and down the river, all day long, things were passing. Now a string
of barges drifting down to London, piled with lime or barrels of beer;
then a steam-launch, disengaging heavy masses of black smoke, and
disturbing the whole width of the river with long rolling waves; then
an impetuous electric launch, and then a boatload of pleasure-seekers,
a solitary sculler, or a four from some rowing club. Perhaps the river
was quietest of a morning or late at night. One moonlight night some
people drifted down singing, and with a zither playing--it sounded
very pleasantly across the water.

In a few days Bailey began to recognise some of the craft; in a week
he knew the intimate history of half-a-dozen. The launch _Luzon_, from
Fitzgibbon's, two miles up, would go fretting by, sometimes three or
four times a day, conspicuous with its colouring of Indian-red and
yellow, and its two Oriental attendants; and one day, to Bailey's vast
amusement, the house-boat _Purple Emperor_ came to a stop outside, and
breakfasted in the most shameless domesticity. Then one afternoon, the
captain of a slow-moving barge began a quarrel with his wife as they
came into sight from the left, and had carried it to personal violence
before he vanished behind the window-frame to the right. Bailey
regarded all this as an entertainment got up to while away his
illness, and applauded all the more moving incidents. Mrs Green,
coming in at rare intervals with his meals, would catch him clapping
his hands or softly crying, "Encore!" But the river players had other
engagements, and his encore went unheeded.

"I should never have thought I could take such an interest in things
that did not concern me," said Bailey to Wilderspin, who used to come
in in his nervous, friendly way and try to comfort the sufferer by
being talked to. "I thought this idle capacity was distinctive of
little children and old maids. But it's just circumstances. I simply
can't