“But the married girls are so stupid, my dear boy,” ejaculated his room-mate, Mr. Fielding.  “You must admit that, if one must have either, the single ones are decidedly preferable, or at least the young single ones.”

“Don’t try to be funny,” said Symington savagely:  “you only succeed in being weak.  I have”—­and he pulled out a note-book and glared at its contents—­“an engagement to take two to a concert this evening, other two to a tennis-match on Saturday, and another one out rowing this afternoon.  And it’s time for me to go now.”

“It strikes me you’ve been pretty middling weak,” commented Fielding.  “Either that, or you’re yarning tremendously about its being a bore:  you can take your choice.”

“I leave it with you,” said Symington wearily.  “That Glover girl is probably cooling her heels on the bank, and I must go.”

“Alas, my brother! it is long since one of those Glover girls captured me!”

The victim was a little late for his engagement, but no indignant Glover girl lay in wait for him.  The bank, green with the first soft grass of spring, was deserted.  Had she come and gone?  He arranged himself comfortably in the boat and began to sing, the balmy air and the surroundings suggesting his song,—­

    Oh, hoi-ye-ho, ho-ye-ho, who’s for the ferry?

and went through the first verse, beginning softly, but unconsciously raising his voice as he went on, until, as he came to the second, he was singing very audibly indeed, and Rosamond, standing on the bank, looking uncertainly about her for the old boatman, was in time to hear,

    She’d a rose in her bonnet, and, oh, she looked sweet
    As the little pink flower that grows in the wheat,
    With her cheeks like a rose and her lips like a cherry,—­
    “And sure and you’re welcome to Twickenham town.”

The curious feeling which makes one aware of being looked at caused him to turn and look up as he finished the verse, and he longed for the self-possession of his room-mate as he vainly struggled to think of something to say which should not be utterly inane.  He felt himself blushing, but he was well aware that a blush on his sunburned face was not so charmingly becoming as it was to the vision on the bank.  It was she who spoke at last, with the ghost of a smile accompanying her speech.

“I beg your pardon,” she said, “but I was told that I should probably find an old man here who would row me across.  Do you know where he’s gone?”

“He is—­that is—­I think—­I believe he’s gone to dinner,” stammered this usually inflexible advocate of truth.

And it did not occur to Rosamond to suggest that between four and five in the afternoon was an unusual dinner-hour for a ferryman.

She looked very much disappointed, and turned as if to go.

“Won’t you—­may I—­” eagerly stammered the youth, and added desperately, “I’m here in his place,” mentally explaining to an outraged conscience that this was literally true, for was not his boat tied to a stake, and must not that stake have been driven by the old man for his boat?  Dr. Watts has told us that