“Oh, in winter we are always on the Riviera. We go to Cannes each December and stay till the end of April. Mother declares she could not live through an English winter.”
This statement did not coincide with what the innkeeper’s wife had told me, namely, that the Glaslyns were much pressed for money.
“I spent one season in Nice a few years ago,” I said. “It is certainly charming, and I hope to go there again.”
“But is not our own Thames, with all its natural picturesqueness, quite as beautiful in its way?” she asked, looking around. “I love it. People who have been up the Rhine and the Rhone, the Moselle and the Loire, say that for picturesque scenery none of those great European rivers compare with ours.”
“I believe that to be quite true,” I answered. “Like yourself, I am extremely fond of boating and picnicking.”
“We often have picnics,” she said. “I’ll get mother to invite you to the next—if you’ll come.”
“Certainly,” I answered, much gratified. “I shall be only too delighted.”
We were at that moment passing two fine house-boats moored near one another, one of which my companion explained belonged to a well-known City stockbroker, and the other to a barrister of repute at the Chancery Bar. Both were gay with the usual geraniums and creepers, having inviting-looking deck-chairs on the roof and canaries in gilded cages hanging at the windows.
“Shall we go up the backwater?” she suddenly suggested. “It is more beautiful there than the main stream. We might get some lilies.”
“Of course,” I answered, and with a pull to the left turned the boat into the narrower stream branching out at the left, a stream that wound among fertile meadows yellow with buttercups, and where long lines of willows trailed in the water.