“I s’pose not,” Tilda admitted doubtfully.

“Well now, if your friend Bill started to drive th’ old Success to Commerce like a train, first he’d be surprised an’ disappointed to see her heavin’ a two-foot wave ahead of her—­maybe more, maybe less—­along both banks; an’ next it might annoy ’im a bit when these two waves fell together an’ raised a weight o’ water full on her bows, whereby she ’d travel like a slug, an’ the ‘arder he drove the more she wouldn’ go; let be that she’d give ’im no time to cuss, even when I arsked ’im perlitely what it felt like to steer a monkey by the tail.  Next an’ last, if he should ’appen to find room for a look astern at the banks, it might vex ‘im—­bein’ the best o’ men as well as the cleverest—­to notice that he ’adn’t left no banks, to speak of.  Not that ’twould matter to ’im pers’nally—­’avin’ no further use for ’em.”

Tilda, confounded by this close reasoning, was about to retreat with dignity under the admission that, after all, canal-work gave no scope to a genius such as Bill’s, when ’Dolph came barking to announce the near approach of Mr. Mortimer.

Mr. Mortimer, approaching with a gait modelled upon Henry Irving’s, was clearly in radiant mood.  Almost he vaulted the stile between the field and the canal bank.  Alighting, he hailed the boat in nautical language—­

“Ahoy, Smiles!  What cheer, my hearty?”

“Gettin’ along nicely, sir,” reported Mr. Bossom.  “Nicely, but peckish.  The same to you, I ’ope.”

“Good,” was the answer.  “Speak to the mariners:  fall to’t yarely, or we run ourselves aground.  Bestir, bestir!”

Tilda, who for the last minute or so had been unconsciously holding Arthur Miles by the hand, was astonished of a sudden to find it trembling in hers.

“You mustn’ mind what Mr. Mortimer says,” she assured the child encouragingly—­“it’s on’y his way.”

Mr. Mortimer stepped jauntily across the gang-plank, declaiming with so much of gesture as a heavy market-basket permitted—­

   “The pirates of Parga, who dwell by the waves,
    And teach the pale Franks what it is to be slaves,
    Shall leave by the beach, Smiles, the long galley and oar—­”

“I have done it, Smiles.  In the words of the old-time classical geometer, I have found it; and as he remarked on another occasion (I believe subsequently), ’Give me where to stand, and I will move the Universe.’  His precise words, if I recall the original Greek, were Dos Pou Sto—­and the critical ear will detect a manly—­er—­self-reliance in the terse monosyllables.  In these days,” pursued Mr. Mortimer, setting down the market-basket, unbuttoning his furred overcoat, extracting a green and yellow bandanna from his breastpocket and mopping his heated brow, “in these days we have lost that self-confidence.  We are weary, disillusioned.  We have ceased to expect gold at the rainbow’s foot.  Speaking without disrespect to the poet