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, Phœbe’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.