e
winding river, and the low blue hills beyond it. At the Cherwell
boat-house they found the two boats, with four or five men, and Nora, as
usual, taking charge of everything, at least till Herbert Pryce
should appear.

Connie was just stepping into the foremost boat, assisted by Herbert
Pryce, who was in his shirt-sleeves, while Lord Meyrick and another
Marmion man were already in the boat.

"Sorell, will you stroke the other boat?" said Pryce, "and Miss Nora,
will you have a cushion in the bows? Now I think we're made up. No--we
want another lady. And running his eyes over those still standing on the
bank, he called a plump little woman, the wife of a Llandaff tutor, who
had been walking with Mrs. Hooper.

"Mrs. Maddison, will you come with us? I think that will about trim us."

Mrs. Maddison obeyed him with alacrity, and the first boat pushed off.
Mrs. Hooper, Alice, Sorell, two St. Cyprian undergraduates and Nora's
girl friend, Miss Watson, followed in the second.

Then, while the June evening broadened and declined, the party wound in
and out of the curves of the Cherwell. The silver river, brimming from a
recent flood, lay sleepily like a gorged serpent between the hay meadows
on either side. Flowers of the edge, meadow-sweet, ragged-robin and
yellow flags, dipped into the water; willows spread their thin green
over the embattled white and blue of the sky; here and there a rat
plunged or a bird fled shrieking; bushes of wild roses flung out their
branches, and everywhere the heat and the odours of a rich open land
proclaimed the fulness of the midland summer.

Connie made the life of the leading boat. Something had roused her, and
she began to reveal some of the "parlour-tricks," with which she had
amused the Palazzo Barberini in her Roman days. A question from Pryce
stirred her into quoting some of the folk-songs of the Campagna, some
comic, some tragic, fitting an action to them so lively and true that
even those of her hearers who could not follow the dialect sat
entranced. Then some one said--"But they ought to be sung!" And
suddenly, though rather shyly, she broke into a popular _canzone_ of the
Garibaldian time, describing the day of Villa Gloria; the march of the
morning, the wild hopes, the fanfaronade; and in the evening, a girl
hiding a wounded lover and weeping both for him and "Italia" undone.

The sweet low sounds floated along the river.

"Delicious!" said Sorell, holding his oar suspended t