A pale shaft of daylight slanted through the cabin doorway.  It touched Tilda’s eyelids, and she opened them at once, stared, and relaxed her embrace.

“Awake?” asked Mrs. Mortimer’s voice from the shadow above the locker.  “Well, I’m glad of that, because I want to get to the stove.  Sardines,” said Mrs. Mortimer, “you can take out with a fork; but, packed as we are, when one moves the rest must follow suit.  Is the boy stirring too?”

“No,” answered Tilda, peering down on him.  But as she slipped her arm from under his neck, he came out of dreamland with a quick sob and a shudder very pitiful to hear and to feel.  “Hush!” she whispered, catching at his hand and holding it firmly.  “It’s me—­Tilda; an’ you won’t go back there never no more.”

“I—­I thought—­” said he, and so with an easier sob lay still.

“O’ course you did,” Tilda soothed him.  “But what’s ’appened to the boat, ma’am?”

“We are at anchor.  If you want to know why, you had best crawl out and ask Mr. Bossom.  He gave the order, and Stanislas has gone ashore to buy provisions.  Marketing,” said Mrs. Mortimer, “is not my husband’s strong point, but we’ll hope for the best.”

The cabin doorway was low as well as narrow.  Looking through it, Tilda now discerned in the gathering daylight the lower half of Sam Bossom’s person.  He sat with his legs dangling over the break of the stairway, and as the children crawled forth they perceived that he was busy with a small notebook.

“Why are we stoppin’ here?” demanded Tilda, with a glance about her.

The boat lay moored against the bank opposite the towpath, where old Jubilee stood with his face deep in a nosebag.  He stood almost directly against the rising sun, the effect of which was to edge his outline with gold, while his flank presented the most delicate of lilac shadows.  Beyond him stretched a level country intersected with low hedges, all a-dazzle under the morning beams.  To the left the land sloped gently upward to a ridge crowned, a mile away, by a straggling line of houses and a single factory chimney.  Right astern, over Mr. Bossom’s shoulder, rose the clustered chimneys, tall stacks, church spires of the dreadful town, already wreathed in smoke.  It seemed to Tilda, although here were meadows and clean waterflags growing by the brink, and a wide sky all around, that yet this ugly smoke hung on their wake and threatened them.

“Why are we stoppin’?” she demanded again, as Sam Bossom, with a hurried if friendly nod, resumed his calculations.

“And four is fifteen, and fifteen is one-an’-three,” said he.  “Which,” he added, looking up as one who would stand no contradiction, “is the ’alf of two-an’-six . . .  You’ll excuse me, missy, but business first an’ pleasure afterwards.  We’re stoppin’ here for the day.”

“For the day?” echoed Tilda, with a dismayed look astern.  “An’ we’ve on’y come this far!”