Consequently when Riddell arrived at the boat-house he found no one up. After a good deal of knocking he managed to rouse the boatman.
“I want Tom,” he said, “to steer me up to the Willows.”
“You might have let me known you’d want the gig yesterday,” said the man, rather surlily; “I’d have left it out for you overnight.”
Had it been Bloomfield or Fairbairn, or any other of the boating heroes of Willoughby, Blades the boatman would have sung a very different song. But a boatman does not know anything about senior classics.
“You’ll find a boat moored by the landing there,” said that functionary; “and give a call for young Alf, he’ll do to steer you.”
But this would not suit Riddell at all. “No,” said he; “I want Tom, please, and tell him to be quick.”
The man went off surlily, and Riddell was left to kick his heels for twenty minutes in a state of very uncomfortable suspense.
At length, to his relief, Tom, a knowing youth of about fourteen, appeared, with a cushion over one shoulder and a pair of sculls over the other, and the embarkation was duly effected.
Tom was a privileged person at Willoughby. In consideration of not objecting to an occasional licking, he was permitted to be as impudent and familiar as he pleased to the young gentlemen in whose service he laboured. Being a professional waterman, he considered it his right to patronise everybody. Even old Wyndham last season had received most fatherly encouragement from this irreverent youngster, while any one who could make no pretensions to skill with the oars was simply at his mercy.
This being so, Riddell had made up his mind for a trying time of it, and was not disappointed.