“Thank you very much,” she said, “for saving my drawings.  It was awfully good of you, especially—­”

“Oh, you are welcome,” said I, cutting her off short; and, handing the other young woman her umbrella, I passed by the impudent one without so much as looking at her, and on the other side of the hedge I saw Jone coming across the grass.  I jerked open the gate, not caring who it might swing against, and walked to meet Jone.  When I was near enough I called out to know what on earth had become of him that he had left me there so long by myself, forgetting that I hadn’t wanted him to come at all; and he told me that he had had a hard time getting on shore, because they found the banks very low and muddy, and when he had landed he was on the wrong side of a hedge, and had to walk a good way around it.

“I was troubled,” said he, “because I thought you might come to grief with the hogs.”

“Hogs!” said I, so sarcastic, that Jone looked hard at me, but I didn’t tell him anything more till we was in the boat, and then I just said right out what had happened.  Jone couldn’t help laughing.

“If I had known,” said he, “that you was on top of a gate discussing horses’ tails and cabs I wouldn’t have felt in such a hurry to get to you.”

“And you would have made a mistake if you hadn’t,” I said, “for hogs are nothing to such a person as was on that gate.”

Old Samivel was rowing slow and looking troubled, and I believe at that minute he forgot the River Wye was crooked.

“That was really hard, madam,” he said, “really hard on you; but it was a woman, and you have to excuse women.  Now if they had been three Englishmen sitting on that gate they would never have said such things to you, knowing that you was a stranger in these parts and had come on shore to do them a service.  And now, madam, I’m glad to see you are beginning to take notice of the landscapes again.  Just ahead of us is another bend, and when we get around that you’ll see the prettiest picture you’ve seen yet.  This is a crooked river, madam, and that’s how it got its name.  Wye means crooked.”

After a while we came to a little church near the river bank, and here Samivel stopped rowing, and putting his hands on his knees he laughed gayly.

“It always makes me laugh,” he said, “whenever I pass this spot.  It seems to me like such an awful good joke.  Here’s that church on this side of the river, and away over there on the other side of the river is the rector and the congregation.”

“And how do they get to church?” said I.

“In the summer time,” said he, “they come over with a ferry-boat and a rope; but in the winter, when the water is frozen, they can’t get over at all.  Many’s the time I’ve lain in bed and laughed and laughed when I thought of this church on one side of the river, and the whole congregation and the rector on the other side, and not able to get over.”