‘Mr. Amble, I shall think you foolish,’ said the spouse, with a nod of more than emphasis.

My dear, you have only to decide,’ was the meek reply.

By this time, Miss Alice had so far conquered the fiend of laughter that she could venture to summon her mother close up to the bank and extend a rescuing hand.  Mrs. Amble waded to within reach, her husband following.  Arrangements were made for Alice to pull, and the vicar to push; both in accordance with Mrs. Amble’s stipulations, for even in her extremity of helplessness she affected rule and sovereignty.  Unhappily, at the decisive moment, I chanced (and I admit it was more than an inadvertence on my part, it was a most ill-considered thing to do) I chanced, I say, to call out—­and that I refrained from quoting Voltaire is something in my favour: 

‘How on earth did you manage to tumble in?’

There can be no contest of opinion that I might have kept my curiosity waiting, and possibly it may be said with some justification that I was the direct cause of my friend’s unparalleled behaviour; but could a mortal man guess that in the very act of assisting his wife’s return to dry land, and while she was—­if I may put it so—­modestly in his hands, he would turn about with a quotation that compared him to old Palinurus, all the while allowing his worthy and admirable burden to sink lower and dispread in excess upon the surface of the water, until the vantage of her daughter’s help was lost to her; I beheld the consequences of my indiscretion, dismayed.  I would have checked the preposterous Virgilian, but in contempt of my uplifted hand and averted head, and regardless of the fact that his wife was then literally dependent upon him, the vicar declaimed (and the drenching effect produced by Latin upon a lady at such a season, may be thought on): 

               Vix primos inopina quies laxaverat artus,
               Et super incumbens, cum puppis parte revulsa
               Cumque gubernaclo liquidas projecit in undas.’

It is not easy when you are unacquainted with the language, to retort upon Latin, even when the attempt to do so is made in English.  Very few even of the uneducated ears can tolerate such anti-climax vituperative as English after sounding Latin.  Mrs. Amble kept down those sentiments which her vernacular might have expressed.  I heard but one groan that came from her as she lay huddled indistinguishably in the, arms of her husband.

‘Not—­praecipitem!  I am happy to say,’ my senseless friend remarked further, and laughed cheerfully as he fortified his statement with a run of negatives.  ‘No, no’; in a way peculiar to him.  ’No, no.  If I plant my grey hairs anywhere, it will be on dry land:  no.  But, now, my dear; he returned to his duty; why, you’re down again.  Come:  one, two, and up.’