"
Amenda took stock of him.
"It will be a change of occupation for him, sir, I should say, by the
look of him," she remarked.
After that, whenever some more than usually stirring crash or
blood-curdling bump would cause us to leap from our seats and cry: "What
on earth has happened?" Amenda would reply: "Oh, it's only James, mum,
making himself generally useful."
Whatever he lifted he let fall; whatever he touched he upset; whatever he
came near--that was not a fixture--he knocked over; if it was a fixture,
it knocked _him_ over. This was not carelessness: it seemed to be a
natural gift. Never in his life, I am convinced, had he carried a
bucketful of anything anywhere without tumbling over it before he got
there. One of his duties was to water the flowers on the roof.
Fortunately--for the flowers--Nature, that summer, stood drinks with a
lavishness sufficient to satisfy the most confirmed vegetable toper:
otherwise every plant on our boat would have died from drought. Never
one drop of water did they receive from him. He was for ever taking them
water, but he never arrived there with it. As a rule he upset the pail
before he got it on to the boat at all, and this was the best thing that
could happen, because then the water simply went back into the river, and
did no harm to any one.
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