“But you don’t mean to say you are a boatman?” said Mr Pringle; “you don’t look like it. It must be a very precarious life.”
“I am head man at the rafts,” said Dick—“thanks to Mr Ross, who got me taken on when I was a lad”—(he was not quite nineteen then, but maturity comes early among the poor), “and we’re boatbuilders to our trade. You should see some of the boats we turn out, sir, if you care for such things.”
“But I suppose, my man, you have had a better education than is usual?” said Mr Pringle, looking so gravely at him that Dick thought he must disapprove of such vanities. “You don’t speak in the least like the other lads about here.”
“I suppose it’s being so much with the gentlemen,” said Dick, with a smile. “I am no better than the other lads. Mr Ross has given me books—and things.”
“Mr Ross must have been very kind to you,” said Mr Pringle, with vague suspicions which he could not define—“he must have known you before?”
“Hasn’t he just been kind to me!” said Dick, a flush coming to his fair face; “an angel couldn’t have been kinder! No, I never saw him till two years ago; but lucky for me, he took a fancy to me—and I, if I may make so bold as to say so, to him.”
“Mr Brown,” said Violet, looking at him with a kind of heavenly dew in her dark eyes—for to call such effusion of happiness tears would be a word out of place—“I am afraid, if we are going through the lock, I shall not be able to steer.”
This was not in the least what she wanted to say. What she wanted to say was, I can see you are a dear, dear, good fellow, and I love you for being so fond of Val; and how Dick should have attained to a glimmering of understanding, and known that this was what she meant, I cannot tell—but he did. Such things happen now and then even in this stupid everyday world.
“Never mind, Miss,” he said cheerfully, looking back at her with his sunshiny blue eyes, “I can manage. Hold your strings fast that you may not lose them: the steerage is never much use in a lock; and if you’re nervous, there’s the Sergeant, who is a great friend of Mr Ross’s, will pull us through.”
The lock was swarming with boats, and Violet, not to say her father, who was not quite sure about this mode of progression, looked up with hope and admiration at the erect figure of the Sergeant, brave and fine in his waterman’s dress with his silver buttons, and medals of a fiercer service adorning his blue coat. The Sergeant had shed his blood for his country before he came to superintend the swimming of the favoured ones on the Thames. His exploits in the water and those of his pupils are lost to the general public, from the unfortunate fact that English prejudice objects to trammel the limbs of its natateurs by any garments. But literature lifts its head in unsuspected places, and the gentle reader will be pleased to learn that the Sergeant’s Book on Swimming will soon make the name, which I decline to deliver to premature applauses, known over all the world. He looked to Violet, who was somewhat frightened by the crowds of boats, like an archangel in silver buttons, as he caught the boat with his long pole, and guided them safely through.