of it and think yourself lucky, but don't think after
that to come over ME with your pardners. We have worked together in time
past, but we work together no more in time present nor yet future. Let
go. Cast off!'

'Gaffer! If you think to get rid of me this way--.'

'If I don't get rid of you this way, I'll try another, and chop you over
the fingers with the stretcher, or take a pick at your head with the
boat-hook. Cast off! Pull you, Lizzie. Pull home, since you won't let
your father pull.'

Lizzie shot ahead, and the other boat fell astern. Lizzie's father,
composing himself into the easy attitude of one who had asserted the
high moralities and taken an unassailable position, slowly lighted a
pipe, and smoked, and took a survey of what he had in tow. What he had
in tow, lunged itself at him sometimes in an awful manner when the boat
was checked, and sometimes seemed to try to wrench itself away, though
for the most part it followed submissively. A neophyte might have
fancied that the ripples passing over it were dreadfully like faint
changes of expression on a sightless face; but Gaffer was no neophyte
and had no fancies.

Chapter 2

THE MAN FROM SOMEWHERE

Mr and Mrs Veneering were bran-new people in a bran-new house in a
bran-new quarter of London. Everything about the Veneerings was spick
and span new. All their furniture was new, all their friends were new,
all their servants were new, their plate was new, their carriage was
new, their harness was new, their horses were new, their pictures
were new, they themselves were new, they were as newly married as was
lawfully compatible with their having a bran-new baby, and if they had
set up a great-grandfather, he would have come home in matting from the
Pantechnicon, without a scratch upon him, French polished to the crown
of his head.

For, in the Veneering establishment, from the hall-chairs with the new
coat of arms, to the grand pianoforte with the new action, and upstairs
again to the new fire-escape, all things were in a state of high varnish
and polish. And what was observable in the furniture, was observable in
the Veneerings--the surface smelt a little too much of the workshop and
was a trifle sticky.

There was an innocent piece of dinner-furniture that went upon easy
castors and was kept over a livery stable-yard in Duke Street, Saint
James's, when not in use, to whom the Veneerings were a source of blind
confusion. The name of this articl