m that he was
breaking coals on our heads. Often one of us dashed into the kitchen,
threatening to drop him into the river if he did not sit quite still
on a chair for the next two hours. Under these threats he looked
sufficiently scared to satisfy anybody; but as soon as all was quiet
again he crept back to the coal-bunk and was at his old games.

[Illustration]

It didn't matter what we did, the boy put a stop to it. We tried whist,
and in ten minutes there was a "Hoy, hie, ya-ho!" from the opposite
shore. It was the boy come back with the vegetables. If we were reading,
"Ya-ho, hie!" and some one had to cross for that boy and the water-can.
The boy was on the tow-path just when we had fallen into a snooze; he had
to be taken across for the milk immediately we had lighted our pipes. On
the whole, it is an open question whether it was not even more annoying
to take him over than to go for him. Two or three times we tried to be
sociable and went into the village together; but no sooner had we begun
to enjoy ourselves than we remembered that we must go back and let the
boy ashore. Tennyson speaks of a company making believe to be merry
while all the time the spirit of a departed one haunted them in their
play. That was exactly the effect of the boy on us.

Even without the boy I hardly think we should have been a sociable
party. The sight of so much humanity gathered in one room became a
nuisance. We resorted to all kinds of subterfuge to escape from each
other; and the one who finished breakfast first generally managed to
make off with the dingy. The others were then at liberty to view him in
the distance, in midstream, lying on his back in the bottom of the boat;
and it was almost more than we could stand. The only way to bring him
back was to bribe the boy into saying that he wanted to go across to the
village for bacon or black lead or sardines. Thus even the boy had his
uses.

Things gradually got worse and worse. I remember only one day when
as many as four of us were on speaking terms. Even this temporary
sociability was only brought about in order that we might combine and
fall upon Jimmy with the more crushing force. Jimmy had put us in an
article, representing himself as a kind of superior person who was
making a study of us. The thing was such a gross caricature, and so
dull, that it was Jimmy we were sorry for rather than ourselves. Still,
we gathered round him in a body and told him what we thought of th