“Eh?” said Rodney Spelvin.
“We’re going out in that boat. I want you to steer.”
Rodney Spelvin’s face showed appreciation of the change of programme. Golf bored him, but what could be nicer than a gentle row in a boat.
“Capital!” he said. “Capital! Capital!”
There was a dreamy look in Rodney Spelvin’s eyes as he leaned back with the tiller-ropes in his hands. This was just his idea of the proper way of passing a summer afternoon. Drifting lazily over the silver surface of the stream. His eyes closed. He began to murmur softly:
“All to-day the slow sleek ripples hardly bear up shoreward, Charged with sighs more light than laughter, faint and fair, Like a woodland lake’s weak wavelets lightly lingering forward, Soft and listless as the—Here! Hi!”
For at this moment the silver surface of the stream was violently split by a vigorously-wielded niblick, the boat lurched drunkenly, and over his Panama-hatted head and down his grey-flannelled torso there descended a cascade of water.
“Here! Hi!” cried Rodney Spelvin.
He cleared his eyes and gazed reproachfully. Jane and William Bates were peering into the depths.
“I missed it,” said Jane.