“No,” I said; but as a lock was then coming in sight, and a decent-looking village, an idea occurred to me. “Let’s buy a pen’orth of milk and put to it,” I said.
Jack’s eyes sparkled, and hanging the basket pro tem. on the hames, he cracked his whip, and we proceeded a little more quickly towards the lock, where I bought a twopenny loaf and some milk for our tea. I say ours, for Jack literally shared his with me.
“Where are you going to sleep?” said Jack to me at last, as the evening mists were beginning to rise on the meadows.
“I don’t know,” I said rather dolefully, for the idea had not occurred to me before.
“Come and bunk along o’ me.”
“Where?” I asked.
“Under the tarpaulin in front o’ the barge,” he said; “I allus sleeps there now, cos father says my legs gets in the way in the cabin.”
“But would your father mind?”
“Not he. He’ll go ashore as soon as we make fast for the night and lets the horses loose to feed. He wouldn’t mind.”
And so it turned out, for the barge was made fast to a couple of stout posts in a wider part of the canal, close to a lock where there was a public-house. The horses were turned out to graze on the thick grass beside the tow-path, and after a little hesitation I took my bundle and shoes and crept in beneath a tarpaulin raised up in the middle to make quite a tent, which Jack had contrived in the fore port of the barge.