"Yes," replied Juliet, "when we have a breakfast."
"Don't you always have a breakfast?"
"Most days, when mother has got on with her work."
Rowles turned away.
A cry of "Lock-man! Hie! Lock-man!" sounded on the calm evening air.
Rowles went out, and his voice was heard in conversation with that of another man; then the lifting up of the sluices broke the stillness, and the creaking of the lock-gate as it opened. After that Rowles came in again, laughing scornfully.
"It was the chap that slipped into the water this morning. He is a persevering chap, to be sure. He says he is determined to learn to row, and to swim, and to punt, and to fish. And he went down this afternoon, and now he's gone up, and he is dead-beat already; and how he'll get home he can't tell for the life of him. Why, he knows just as much about boating as Juliet there. I'd like to see him and her double sculling. They'd just be a pair, they would."
Juliet listened to everything but said little, and when she was ordered off to bed she silently followed Emily up to the attic, where Mrs. Rowles had already contrived to make a second little bed on the floor.
After she was in bed Juliet listened for a long while to the roar of the weir, wondering at what she thought must be distant thunder. Then the occasional twitter of a bird, or the soft lowing of a cow, or the splash of a fish leaping in the river, disturbed her from her thoughts and startled her. And once, when all was very dark and very silent, she heard the regular pulse of oars, and the clanking of chains, and the creaking of wood, and subdued voices; and she imagined robbers. But all became quiet again; and at last, at last, her ideas grew confused, and she fell asleep.
