We have reached the rendezvous. We see now that we need not have been in such a hurry.
"There!" says Jenny excitedly. "Isn't he a darling little crab? He's asleep." (That's why we need not have hurried.)
Richard Henry says nothing. He can't think of the words for what he is feeling. What he wants to say is that Jenny has let him down again. They passed a lot of these funny little things on their way here, but Jenny wouldn't stop because she was going to show him a Crab, a great, big, enormous darling little Crab—which might have been anything—and now it's only just this. No wonder the old gentleman didn't believe him.
Swindled—that's the word he wants. However, he can't think of it for the moment, so he tries something else.
"Darling little crab," he says.
They leave the dead crab there and hurry back.
"What shall I show you now?" says Jenny.
GOLDEN MEMORIES
When Memory with its scorn of ages,
Its predilection for the past,
Turns back about a billion pages
And lands us by the Cam at last;
Is it the thought of "Granta" (once our daughter),
The Freshers' Match, the Second in our Mays
That makes our mouth, our very soul to water?
Ah no! Ah no! It is the Salmon Mayonnaise!
The work we did was rarely reckoned
Worthy a tutor's kindly word—
(For when I said we got a Second
I really meant we got a Third)—
The games we played were often tinged with bitter,
Amidst the damns no faintest hint of praise
Greeted us when we missed the authentic "sitter"—
But thou wert always kind, O Salmon Mayonnaise!