ve one or two of them run down now and then, if I had
my way, just to teach them all a lesson.

The river becomes very lovely from a little above Reading. The railway
rather spoils it near Tilehurst, but from Mapledurham up to Streatley it
is glorious. A little above Mapledurham lock you pass Hardwick House,
where Charles I. played bowls. The neighbourhood of Pangbourne, where
the quaint little Swan Inn stands, must be as familiar to the _habitues_
of the Art Exhibitions as it is to its own inhabitants.

My friends' launch cast us loose just below the grotto, and then Harris
wanted to make out that it was my turn to pull. This seemed to me most
unreasonable. It had been arranged in the morning that I should bring
the boat up to three miles above Reading. Well, here we were, ten miles
above Reading! Surely it was now their turn again.

I could not get either George or Harris to see the matter in its proper
light, however; so, to save argument, I took the sculls. I had not been
pulling for more than a minute or so, when George noticed something black
floating on the water, and we drew up to it. George leant over, as we
neared it, and laid hold of it. And then he drew back with a cry, and a
blanched face.

It was the dead body of a woman. It lay very lightly on the water, and
the face was sweet and calm. It was not a beautiful face; it was too
prematurely aged-looking, too thin and drawn, to be that; but it was a
gentle, lovable face, in spite of its stamp of pinch and poverty, and
upon it was that look of restful peace that comes to the faces of the
sick sometimes when at last the pain has left them.

Fortunately for us--we having no desire to be kept hanging about
coroners' courts--some men on the bank had seen the body too, and now
took charge of it from us.

We found out the woman's story afterwards. Of course it was the old, old
vulgar tragedy. She had loved and been deceived--or had deceived
herself. Anyhow, she had sinned--some of us do now and then--and her
family and friends, naturally shocked and indignant, had closed their
doors against her.

Left to fight the world alone, with the millstone of her shame around her
neck, she had sunk ever lower and lower. For a while she had kept both
herself and the child on the twelve shillings a week that twelve hours'
drudgery a day procured her, paying six shillings out of it for the
child, and keeping her own body and soul together on the remainder.