d Prime Minister
comes down to me tomorrow. I detest old men," said General Cochrane.
"Well, then, the day after?"

The Thames was a picture-book river that day, gay with row-boats and
punts and launches, yet serene for all its gaiety; slipping between
grassy banks under immemorial trees with the air of a private stream
wandering, protected, through an estate. The English have the gift above
other nations of producing an atmosphere of leisure and seclusion, and
surely there is no little river on earth so used and so unabused as the
Thames. Of all the craft abroad that bright afternoon, General
Cochrane's white launch with its gold line above the water and its
gleaming brass trimmings was far and away the prettiest, and I was
bursting with pride as we passed the rank and file on the stream and
they looked at us admiringly. To be alive on such a day in England was
something; to be afloat on the silvery Thames was enchantment; to be in
that lovely boat with General Cochrane, the boy Donald Cochrane, was a
rapture not to be believed without one's head reeling. Yet here it was
happening, the thing I should look back upon fifty, sixty years from
now, an old gray woman, and tell my grandchildren as the most
interesting event of my life. It was happening, and I was enjoying every
second, and not in the least awed into misery, as is often the case with
great moments. For the old officer was as perfect a playmate as any
good-for-nothing young subaltern in England, and that is putting it
strongly.

"Wouldn't it be nicer to land at Sonning and have our tea there?" he
suggested. We were dropping through the lock just higher than the
village; the wet, mossy walls were rising above us on both sides and the
tops of the lock-keeper's gorgeous pink snapdragons were rapidly going
out of sight. My host went on: "There's rather a nice rose-garden, and
it's on the river, and the plum-cake's good. What do you think, that or
on board?"

"The rose-garden," I decided.

Sonning is a village cut out of a book and pasted on the earth. It can't
be true, it's so pretty. And the little White Hart Inn is adorable.

"Is it really three hundred years old?" I asked. "The standard roses
look like an illustration out of 'Alice in Wonderland.' Yes, please--tea
in the White Hart garden."

The old General heaved a sigh. "Thank Heaven," he said. "I was most
awfully anxious for fear you'd say on the boat, and I didn't order any."

We slipped under an ar