now
beforehand. But you might get a grown-up person to explain it to you
with books or wooden bricks.

I will tell you what a pen is because that is easy. It is the bit of
river between one lock and the next. In some rivers "pens" are called
"reaches," but pen is the proper word.

We went along the towing-path; it is shady with willows, aspens, alders,
elders, oaks and other trees. On the banks are flowers--yarrow,
meadow-sweet, willow herb, loose-strife, and lady's bed-straw. Oswald
learned the names of all these trees and plants on the day of the
picnic. The others didn't remember them, but Oswald did. He is a boy of
what they call relenting memory.

The anglers were sitting here and there on the shady bank among the
grass and the different flowers I have named. Some had dogs with them,
and some umbrellas, and some had only their wives and families.

We should have liked to talk to them and ask how they liked their lot,
and what kinds of fish there were, and whether they were nice to eat,
but we did not like to.

Denny had seen anglers before and he knew they liked to be talked to,
but though he spoke to them quite like to equals he did not ask the
things we wanted to know. He just asked whether they'd had any luck, and
what bait they used.

And they answered him back politely. I am glad I am not an angler. It is
an immovable amusement, and, as often as not, no fish to speak of after
all.

Daisy and Dora had stayed at home: Dora's foot was nearly well, but
they seem really to like sitting still. I think Dora likes to have a
little girl to order about. Alice never would stand it. When we got to
Stoneham Lock, Denny said he should go home and fetch his fishing-rod.
H. O. went with him. This left four of us--Oswald, Alice, Dicky, and
Noel. We went on down the towing-path.

The lock shuts up (that sounds as if it was like the lock on a door, but
it is very otherwise) between one pen of the river and the next; the pen
where the anglers were was full right up over the roots of the grass and
flowers.

But the pen below was nearly empty.

"You can see the poor river's bones," Noel said.

And so you could.

Stones and mud and dried branches, and here and there an old kettle or a
tin pail with no bottom to it, that some bargee had chucked in.

From walking so much along the river we knew many of the bargees.
Bargees are the captains and crews of the big barges that are pulled up
and down the river by slow hors