"Yes, get in. Here they come, four on 'em—two blue stripes, one red stripe, and one all gals. They can all go in together."
"In the water!" cried Mrs. Mitchell.
"No, Mary; in the lock. What a cockney you are!"
He went to work the paddles and the handles, and while he was so employed the others heard a tremendous halloo from the bank on the far side of the river. Juliet looked slightly alarmed and said to her mother, "I think it is Mrs. Bosher's brother."
And so it was. He had come down through the wood and the fields by the same path which Juliet had gone up on the sad day when she ran away from Littlebourne Lock. But he was not frightened by the cows, nor caught by the brambles, and had he met himself with a gun he would not have been at all terrified.
As soon as his loud deep voice was heard, Philip got into the Fairy and went across to fetch him. While this was doing the four boats got through the lock, and Rowles came back to talk to his friends.
"I suppose you can swim?" he said to Mitchell.
"Yes; and so can my boy Albert. Swimming-baths in London, you know, where you get clean and learn to swim all in one."
"A better bath here," returned Rowles, "and nothing to pay."
He looked lovingly at the beautiful river, rippled by the soft wind into a deeper blue than the clear blue overhead. Mitchell, too, was learning to love the Thames.