We could not find chairs for the girls, so Maisie sat upon a railing with her feet hanging over the edge, till Freddy’s tutor came up from below and informed him that it was hardly decent. So we sat down upon the steps just as the minute gun went off.
‘What an unpleasant old man,’ said Maisie. ‘He’s obviously got no daughters of his own or he’d be in better training.’
‘Oh yes he has,’ said Freddy, ‘but one’s the Professor of Archæology at Girton and the other edits “Clippings for Careful Housewives.”’
‘Oh yes, I know,’ said Maisie, ‘if I scrubbed my face till it shone and wore red flannel petticoats he’d have smiled upon me.’
At this juncture the starting gun boomed out, and very soon after the mingled noises of cheering, rattles, horns, and all kinds of unmusical instruments floated up the stream.
‘Are they coming yet?’ asked Muriel excitedly, as in her efforts to get a better view she trod upon the hat of a lady on a lower step who looked, as she subsequently said, ‘like a ferret with lockjaw’; ‘and what boat’s that?’ as the top of the division began to appear by the ’Varsity boat-house.
‘Gloucester, I think,’ Reggie said. ‘Yes it must be, and there’s our boat close behind.’
‘I think you’ll get them all right,’ said Freddy who with Blitherington was suspended from the awning just above our heads.
‘I lay you a dollar they don’t,’ said the other, ‘why the beggars are as blown as glass.’
Conversation then ceased as the two leading boats of the division came closer into view. Gloucester were about a quarter of a length ahead and rowing fairly evenly, while the Cecil’s crew appeared rather the worse for wear, but in spite of this the fact of being opposite their own barge and other people’s sisters nerved them up to such an extent that they shot up level with the rudder of the Gloucester boat just as they passed us. I caught sight of the face of the Cecil’s stroke, a little man who splendidly exemplifies the old adage that ‘the best goods are done up in the smallest parcels,’ and noticed that he at any rate did not appear to be completely exhausted as yet. Their little cox was rising up in his seat like a soufflé and edging the Gloucester man, who had very foolishly taken the inner berth, closer and closer into the bank. At last the oar of number two in the Gloucester boat grazed the rushes and their cox was obliged to pull out into the stream, so Cecil’s gained their bump just opposite the Lichfield barge and hardly two lengths from the end of the course. The other boats all rowed over, that being the only bump in the division.