"Hallo, Gig-lamps! who the doose had thought of seeing you here, devouring Isis in this expensive way!" said a voice very coolly. And our hero found that he had been rescued by little Mr. Bouncer, who had been tacking up the river in company with Huz and Buz and his meerschaum. "You have been and gone and done it now, young man!" continued the vivacious little gentleman, as he surveyed our hero's draggled and forlorn condition. "If you'd only a comb and a glass in your hand, you'd look distressingly like a cross-breed with a mermaid! You ain't subject to the whatdyecallems - the rheumatics, are you? Because, if so, I could put you on shore at a tidy little shop where you can get a glass of brandy-and-water, and have your clothes dried; and then mamma won't scold."
"Indeed," chattered our hero, "I shall be very glad indeed; for I feel - rather cold. But what am I to do with my boat?"
"Oh, the Lively Polly, or whatever her name is, will find her way back safe enough. There are plenty of boatmen on the river who'll see to her and take her back to her owner; and if you got her from Hall's, I daresay she'll dream that she's dreamt in marble halls, like you did, Gig-lamps, that night at Smalls', when you got wet in rather a more lively style than you've done to-day. Now I'll tack you up to that little shop I told you of."
So there our hero was put on shore, and Mr. Bouncer made fast his boat and accompanied him; and did not leave him until he had seen him between the blankets, drinking a glass of hot brandy-and-water, the while his clothes were smoking before the fire.
This little adventure (for a time at least) checked Mr. Verdant Green's aspirations to distinguish himself on the river; and he therefore renounced the sweets of the Isis, and contented himself by practising with a punt on the Cherwell. There, after repeatedly overbalancing himself in the most suicidal manner, he at length peacefully settled down into the lounging blissfulness of a "Cherwell water-lily;" and on the hot days, among those gentlemen who had moored their punts underneath the overhanging boughs of the willows and limes, and beneath their cool shade were lying, in dolce far niente fashion, with their legs up and a weed in their mouth, reading the last new novel, or some less immaculate work, - among these gentlemen might haply have been discerned the form and spectacles of Mr. Verdant Green.
