Once I had a thrill
when a pair of sandpipers flicked out of a tiny cove and flew, glancing
white, with pointed wings ahead of us. Again we started them, and
again, till they wearied of the chase and flew back, with a wide
circuit, to their first haunt. A cuckoo in a great poplar fluted
solemnly and richly as we murmured past; the world was mostly hidden
from us, but now and then a church tower looked gravely over the bank,
and ran beside us for a time, or the lowing of cattle came softly from
a pasture, or I heard the laughter of unseen children from a cottage
garth. Once or twice we passed an inn, with cheerful, leisurely people
sitting smiling together on a lawn, like a scene out of a romance; and
then at last, on passing Baitsbite lock, we slipped into a merrier
world. Here we heard the beat of rowlocks, the horse-hoofs of a coach
thudded on the bank, and a crew of jolly young men went gliding past,
with a cox shouting directions, just as I might have been doing thirty
years ago! Thirty years ago! And it seems like yesterday, and I not a
scrap older or wiser, though, thank God, a good deal happier. Even so
we drift on to the unseen. Then we passed a village, the thatched
cottages with their white gables rising prettily from the blossoming
orchards. Ditton on its little hill; and the old iron bridge thundered
and clanked with a passing train; then came the rattle of the grinds;
and the mean houses of Barnwell; and soon we were gliding up among the
backs, under the bridge of St.
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