This was sometimes the bank, sometimes another boat, occasionally a
steamer, from six to a dozen times a day our riparian dwelling. That he
never succeeded in staving the houseboat in speaks highly for the man who
built her.
One day he came down upon us with a tremendous crash. Amenda was walking
along the passage at the moment, and the result to her was that she
received a violent blow first on the left side of her head and then on
the right.
She was accustomed to accept one bump as a matter of course, and to
regard it as an intimation from the boy that he had come; but this double
knock annoyed her: so much "style" was out of place in a mere ferry-boy.
Accordingly she went out to him in a state of high indignation.
"What do you think you are?" she cried, balancing accounts by boxing his
ears first on one side and then on the other, "a torpedo! What are you
doing here at all? What do you want?"
"I don't want nothin'," explained the boy, rubbing his head; "I've
brought a gent down."
"A gent?" said Amenda, looking round, but seeing no one. "What gent?"
"A stout gent in a straw 'at," answered the boy, staring round him
bewilderedly.
"Well, where is he?" asked Amenda.
"I dunno," replied the boy, in an awed voice; "'e was a-standin' there,
at the other end of the punt, a-smokin' a cigar.
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