‘Coming back to-morrow morning?’ said Jim. ‘How should she know? Going up you can go as far as the lock, and going down you can go as far as the lock, but not a step more.’
‘That’s like an oracle,’ said Mab.
‘Well, so I am. If I don’t know anything else, I know the river. I know it every step up to Oxford and down to London. I’m as good as the Thames Conservancy man. They’d better put me on if they want to look after all the backwaters and keep the riparians in order. That’s what I could do. I may not be a dab at Sophocles, but there isn’t a man knows the river better. You ask any man that knows me, either at Oxford or here.’
‘Then why does not Uncle James try to get you an appointment on the river? It would be better than going out to the colonies.’
‘Oh, they don’t think so here. In the colonies nobody knows you. You may go about in a flannel shirt and knickerbockers, and a revolver in your belt; but if you stay at home they want some work for you that you can do in a black coat and top hat.’
‘Couldn’t you take care of the riparians and the backwaters in a top hat, if you liked?’
‘Oh, they like a naval man,’ said Jim; ‘their uniform gives them a little dignity, don’t you know, whereas I’m nobody.’
‘But it is the same in everything. You can’t be somebody all at once. You must begin low down,’ said Mab, bending her little person over her oar with that slow, steady stroke which confused Florence. Florry was choppy and irregular—one time slow, the next fast; never able to hit the time which Mab gave her with such steady composure. ‘The way to do,’ said Mab, ‘is to put everything else out of your head, as long as you are able to, and think of nothing but that. You should never mind what you like, or what you want, but just set your thoughts on what you are doing. Look at Florry; she wants to hear what we’re saying, and she wants to defend you, Jim, that I mayn’t say anything unpleasant; and the consequence is that if you were not steering against me with all your might, I should pull the boat round and round.’
‘Florry is only a girl, and a bad specimen,’ said Jim. ‘You should have let me pull, and then you’d have seen something like pulling.’
‘I am only a girl myself,’ said Mab.