'Well, I know in a general sort of way, but not precisely.'
'An egotist is a person who—but why do you want to know?'
'Because just now Mr. Abinger asked me what I was thinking of, and when I said of nothing he called me an egotist.'
'Ah! that kind of egotist is one whose thoughts are too deep for utterance.'
It was twilight. Rob stood on the deck of the house-boat Tawny Owl, looking down at Nell, who sat in the stern, her mother beside her, amid a blaze of Chinese lanterns. Dick lay near them, prone, as he had fallen from a hammock whose one flaw was that it gave way when any one got into it. Mr. Meredith, looking out from one of the saloon windows across the black water that was now streaked with glistening silver, wondered whether he was enjoying himself, and Mary, in a little blue nautical jacket with a cap to match, lay back in a camp-chair on deck with a silent banjo in her hands. Rob was brazening it out in flannels, and had been at such pains to select colours to suit him that the effect was atrocious. He had spent several afternoons at Molesey during the three weeks the Tawny Owl had lain there, but this time he was to remain overnight at the Island Hotel.
The Tawny Owl was part of the hoop of house-boats that almost girded Tagg's Island, and lights sailed through the trees, telling of launches moving to their moorings near the ferry. Now and again there was the echo of music from a distant house-boat. For a moment the water was loquacious as dingeys or punts shot past. Canadian canoes, the ghosts that haunt the Thames by night, lifted their heads out of the river, gaped, and were gone. An osier-wand dipped into the water under a weight of swallows, all going to bed together. The boy on the next house-boat kissed his hand to a broom on board the Tawny Owl, taking it for Mrs. Meredith's servant, and then retired to his kitchen smiling. From the boat-house across the river came the monotonous tap of a hammer. A reed-warbler rushed through his song. There was a soft splashing along the bank.
'There was once a literary character,' Dick murmured, 'who said that to think of nothing was an impossibility, but he lived before the days of house-boats. I came here a week ago to do some high thinking, and I believe I have only managed four thoughts—first, that the cow on the island is an irate cow; second, that in summer the sun shines brightly; third, that the trouble of lighting a cigar is almost as great as the pleasure of smoking it; and fourth, that swans—the fourth thought referred to swans, but it has slipped my memory.'
He yawned like a man glad to get to the end of his sentence, or sorry that he had begun it.
'But I thought,' said Mrs. Meredith, 'that the reason you walk round and round the island by yourself so frequently is because you can think out articles on it?'
'Yes,' Dick answered, 'the island looks like a capital place to think on, and I always start off on my round meaning to think hard. After that all is a blank till I am back at the Tawny Owl, when I remember that I have forgotten to think.'