“That’s the ferry. And there isn’t a ferryman.”
“Could I?”
“Can you punt?”
“Never tried.”
“Well—pull the pole out before you reach the end of the punt, that’s all. Try.”
Mr. Polly went out again into the sunshine.
At times one can tell so much so briefly. Here are the facts then—bare. He found a punt and a pole, got across to the steps on the opposite side, picked up an elderly gentleman in an alpaca jacket and a pith helmet, cruised with him vaguely for twenty minutes, conveyed him tortuously into the midst of a thicket of forget-me-not spangled sedges, splashed some water-weed over him, hit him twice with the punt pole, and finally landed him, alarmed but abusive, in treacherous soil at the edge of a hay meadow about forty yards down stream, where he immediately got into difficulties with a noisy, aggressive little white dog, which was guardian of a jacket.
Mr. Polly returned in a complicated manner to his moorings.
He found the plump woman rather flushed and tearful, and seated at one of the green tables outside.
“I been laughing at you,” she said.