“Can you wonder at that?” asks Ellen. “Its scenery is so grand—I should say, incomparable; nothing equal to it in England.”
“I don’t wonder,” says Miss Wynn, replying to the question. “I’m only a little bit vexed seeing them there. It’s like the desecration of some sacred stream, leaving scraps of newspapers in which they wrap their sandwiches, with other picnicking débris on its banks! To say nought of one’s having to encounter the rude fellows that in these degenerate days go a-rowing—shopboys from the towns, farm labourers, colliers, hauliers, all sorts. I’ve half a mind to set fire to the Gwendoline, burn her up, and never again lay hand on an oar.”
Ellen Lees laughs incredulously as she makes rejoinder.
“It would be a pity,” she says, in serio-comic tone. “Besides, the poor people are entitled to a little recreation. They don’t have too much of it.”
“Ah, true,” rejoins Gwen, who, despite her grandeeism, is neither Tory nor aristocrat. “Well, I’ve not yet decided on that little bit of incendiarism, and shan’t burn the Gwendoline—at all events not till we’ve had another row out of her.”
Not for a hundred pounds would she set fire to that boat, and never in her life was she less thinking of such a thing. For just then she has other views regarding the pretty pleasure craft, and intends taking seat on its thwarts within less than twenty minutes’ time.
“By the way,” she says, as if the thought had suddenly occurred to her, “we may as well have that row now—whether it’s to be the last or not.”
Cunning creature! She has had it in her mind all the morning; first from her bed-chamber window, then from that of the breakfast-room, looking up the river’s reach, with the binocular at her eye, too, to note if a certain boat, with a salmon-rod bending over it, passes down. For one of its occupants is an angler.
“The day’s superb,” she goes on; “sun’s not too hot—gentle breeze—just the weather for a row. And the river looks so inviting—seems calling us to come! What say you, Nell?”
“Oh! I’ve no objections.”