They teased him about his queer clothes and laughed at some of his wild ideas, but he seldom was angry at them for it and never stayed away very long.

With them he often skated on Duddington Loch or canoed on the Firth of Forth.  One summer he and Sir Walter yachted off the west coast of Scotland, and still another year, when longing for further wandering possessed them, they made a trip in canoes through the inland waters of Belgium from Antwerp to Brussels, and then into France and by the rivers Sambre and Oise nearly to Paris.

In the “Inland Voyage,” where Stevenson describes this trip, he calls Sir Walter and his canoe “Cigarette” while he was “Arethusa.”  Adventures were plentiful, and they aroused much curiosity among the dwellers on the banks, with whom they made friends as they went along.

Once Arethusa was all but drowned, when his canoe was overturned by the rapids; and on several occasions, when they applied for a night’s lodging, they were suspected of being tramps or peddlers because of their bedraggled appearance.

One evening after a hard day’s paddling in the rain they landed tired, wet, and hungry at the little town of La Fere.  “The Cigarette and I could not sufficiently congratulate each other on the prospect,” says the Arethusa, “for we had been told there was a capital inn at La Fere.  Such a dinner as we were going to eat.  Such beds as we were going to sleep in, and all the while the rain raining on homeless folk over all the poplared country-side.  It made our mouths water.  The inn bore the name of some woodland animal, stag, or hart, or hind, I forget which.  But I shall never forget how spacious and how eminently comfortable it looked as we drew near....  A rattle of many dishes came to our ears; we sighted a great field of tablecloth; the kitchen glowed like a forge and smelt like a garden of things to eat.

“Into this ... you are now to suppose us making our triumphal entry, a pair of damp rag-and-bone men, each with a limp india-rubber bag upon his arm.  I do not believe I have a sound view of that kitchen; I saw it through a sort of glory, but it seemed to me crowded with the snowy caps of cook-men, who all turned round from their saucepans and looked at us with surprise.  There was no doubt about the landlady however; there she was, heading her army, a flushed, angry woman, full of affairs.  Her I asked politely—­too politely, thinks the Cigarette—­if we could have beds, she surveying us coldly from head to foot.

“‘You will find beds in the suburb,’ she remarked.  ’We are too busy for the like of you.’

“If we could make an entrance, change our clothes, and order a bottle of wine I felt sure we could put things right, so I said, ’If we can not sleep, we may at least dine,’ and was for depositing my bag.

“What a terrible convulsion of nature was that which followed in the landlady’s face!  She made a run at us and stamped her foot.