, and
lazy men in barges would turn their heads to admire her, and
red-capped cooks in the cabooses of "ratching" colliers would step to
the rail to look, and sometimes a party of gay and gallant Cockneys,
male and female, taking their pleasure in a wherry, would salute the
passing _Tom Bowling_ with a flourish of hands and pocket
handkerchiefs.

Never had old Joe been so happy in all his life. Of a night he'd bring
up in some secure nook, and after having seen everything all safe,
he'd go below with Peter Plum, and in the cosy interior of the little
cabin, whose atmosphere was rendered speedily fragrant with the
perfume of rum punch, which Joe, whilst in the West Indies, had learnt
the art of brewing to perfection, the two sailors would sit smoking
their yards of pipe-clay whilst they discoursed on the past, one
incident recalling another, one briny recollection prompting an even
salter memory, until their eyes grew moist and their vision dim in
their balls of sight; whereupon they would turn in and make the little
ship vocal with their noses.

It happened, according to the usual methods of time, that an Easter
Monday came round, which, as we know, was the joyful anniversary of
the death of the wife of the retired tailor, Sloper, whose villa,
called Labour's Retreat, stood upon the banks of the Thames near
Erith. To fitly celebrate this happy day Mr. Sloper had invited three
friends to dine with him. It was in the year 1851, when the class of
society in which Mr. Sloper belonged was not so genteel in its habits
as it has since become; in other words, Sloper dined at two o'clock.
Had he survived into this age he would not have dreamt of dining at an
earlier hour than seven.

His friends were of his own sex. Sloper did not like the ladies. His
friends' calling matters not. They did business in the east end of
London, and were all three thoroughly respectable tradesmen in a small
way, wanting, perhaps, in the muscle and depth of chest and hurricane
lungs of Joe Westlake and Peter Plum, but all of them able to pay
twenty shillings in the pound, to give good value for prompt cash, and
desirous not only of fresh patronage, but determined to a man to merit
the continuance of the same.

When Sloper and his friends had dined, and the bottle had circled
until, like quicksilver in the eye of a hurricane, the contents had
sunk out of sight, the party went on to the lawn to fire off the guns
there in completion of the triumph