LITMIR.BIZ

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sentiments of the same kind. The poor Rector could not restrain a laugh as the young man hurried out of the room, leaving Sophocles just ready to topple over, on the very edge of the table; but it was not a cheerful laugh: though, perhaps, there was the chance that little Mab, if she had only been a little prettier—— Prettiness, however, as he knew, is not the only thing that matters in things of this kind.

      ‘You little brick!’ cried Jim, as they hurried along. ‘I owe you one for that. What put it into your little head to come and get me off to-day? for I was at the end of my patience, and could not think of any excuse to get away.’

      ‘What should you have done, Jim, if I had not come? read your Greek?’

      ‘Not if I know it,’ said Jim. ‘I should just have cut and run, excuse or no excuse. A fellow can’t be shut up all the afternoon, and the sun shining. It’s cruelty to animals. The old Pater has forgotten that he was ever young.’

      ‘But you will keep your promise, Jim, and go back and learn up your Greek?’

      ‘Oh, we’ll see about that. Let’s get our pull first. Oh, there’s Flo! I thought you and I were going alone.’

      ‘It was Florry who wanted you to come,’ said Mab, with the frankness of extreme youth, ‘not me. I like to do the pulling myself.’

      ‘You shall if you like,’ he said. ‘I’m not fond of trouble. And it’s not much fun you know, after all, to go out with your sister and your cousin. It’s too much bread and butter. If I’d known that Flo was in it I shouldn’t have come.’

      ‘You can go back if you please—to your Greek.’

      ‘Oh, catch me,’ said the young man.

      ‘But you will when we come back, Jim?’

      ‘Perhaps I shall; not if you bully me. So I warn you. I should do my work all right and make up lost time if I wasn’t bullied for ever and ever. Every one is at me. You heard what papa said. He ought to know how a man feels and shut up. But it’s being so much among women, I suppose, makes a clergyman like that. If he wasn’t a clergyman he wouldn’t nag, he’d leave that to the women, and then I should feel that there was some one who understood. But how do you suppose a fellow is to do anything when from morning to night he hears nothing but “Are you going to your work, Jim? When do you begin your work? How are you getting on with your work?” and so forth. If I don’t pass it will be the family’s fault, it will not be mine. Mab, do you row stroke or bow?’

      Mab jumped into the boat and took her place, without otherwise answering his question; but when they had floated out amid the reflections of the still river, she found that little tongue, which was not always under proper control.

      ‘I like pulling,’ she said, ‘very much. I’d rather a great deal have an oar myself than sit still and let other people row me; and I like to bring mother out or—Aunt Jane.’ She was about to say even Aunt Jane, but happily remembered that Aunt Jane was the mother of both her companions. ‘But,’ said Mab, with a long, slow stroke, to which Florence, very anxious to hear what was passing, kept time very badly, ‘one thing I do hate is to pull an idle man.’

      ‘By Jove!’ burst from the lips of Jim. He had been listening very calmly up to the last two or three words, amused to hear little Mab’s statement of what she liked and didn’t like, but quite sure that she could say nothing that was derogatory to himself. ‘I say, you little cat, why did you ask me to come out if you meant next moment to give me a scratch like this?’

      ‘I told you it was Florry who wanted you and not me.’

      ‘You might be civil at least,’ said Jim, who had actually reddened under this assault. ‘What did you come and butter up my father for, to let me go?’

      ‘That was different,’ said Mab. ‘When it is against the old people, of course you are my own side; and then it was fun carrying you off as if you were something one had captured; and you looked so silly with uncle holding forth.’ She broke into a laugh, while Jim grew redder and redder. ‘But one thing I will never hold with,’ said Mab, ‘is that girls, who are not nearly so strong, should take and row a big heavy man.’

      ‘Not so heavy,’ cried Florence, pushing her head forward, neglecting her stroke entirely, and putting the boat out of trim. ‘Oh, Mab, why should you reproach him too? He’s no heavier than I am.’

      ‘Shut up, Flo,’ cried Jim indignantly, ‘I’m close upon eleven stone, and that’s the least a man should be of my size.’

      ‘Well,’ said Mab (‘I’ll pull you round, Florry, if you don’t mind)—that is what I say; girls may do for themselves as much as they please, but to drag about a great heavy man, whether it is pulling in a boat or driving in a dog-cart, or whatever it is, is what I don’t like. It is not what ought to be.’

      ‘You are so old-fashioned, Mab,’ said Florence anxiously from behind. ‘You and Aunt Emily, you have the old antiquated ways of thinking about women, that men should take care of them, and work for them, and all that, when perhaps it is the women that are most able to work, and take care of others too.’

      ‘I have no antiquated ways,’ said Mab. ‘I have no ways at all. I don’t think about women any more than about—other people. Mother and I have not got many men to take care of us, have we? But I say, it isn’t our place to pull a heavy man. He should do that for us. I prefer to pull myself. Do, do, Florry, keep time! And I don’t want your help, Jim. I am not talking of to-day; I am talking of things in general. It isn’t nice; it doesn’t look well; it’s not the right thing. I don’t want to have any man working for me; I’d much rather do it for myself. But he is the biggest and the strongest, and we oughtn’t to be doing things for him. That’s my opinion, without any reference to to-day.’

      ‘You are not very civil,’ said Jim. ‘Why didn’t you leave me at my Greek, Miss Mab? I might have done a lot, and been free after dinner. Now, instead of father’s jawing, which I’m used to, I have yours, which I’m not used to, and a slave in the evening as well. Hold hard a moment, till I shake off my coat and my boots, and I’ll swim ashore.’

      ‘Oh, Jim! it will be your death,’ said the frightened Florence, starting from her seat, and once more putting the boat dreadfully out of trim.

      ‘Be quiet, sit down!’ cried Mab, ‘or we shall have an accident. Do you hear? Jim is not going to do anything so silly. I was not speaking of him; I was only making a general remark. You can sit there and welcome so long as you steer against me, Jim: for I am pulling the boat round, can’t you see, and Florry is not the least good.’

      ‘Girls never are,’ said Jim; ‘the least little thing puts them out.’

      ‘You see, Florry:’ said Mab, ‘it was on his account you were exciting yourself and behaving like one of the cockneys on Bank Holiday, and he doesn’t mind. Let him alone. How far can we go to get back in daylight, Jim?’

      Florence once more put in her word. ‘We can go as far as the island,’ she said.

      ‘Coming back to-morrow morning?’ said Jim. ‘How should she know? Going up you can go as far as the lock, and going down you can go as far as the lock, but not a step more.’

      ‘That’s like an oracle,’ said Mab.

      ‘Well, so I am. If I don’t know anything else, I know the river. I know it every step up to Oxford and down to London. I’m as good as the Thames Conservancy man. They’d better put me on if they want to look after all the backwaters and keep the riparians in order. That’s what I could do. I may not be a dab at Sophocles, but there isn’t a man knows the river better. You ask any man that knows me, either at Oxford or here.’

      ‘Then why does not Uncle James try to get you an appointment on the river? It would be better than going out to the colonies.’

      ‘Oh, they don’t think so here. In the colonies nobody knows you. You may go about in

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