‘And that man opposite.’

‘What, Pollingray?  He’s fifty.’

I found myself walking indignantly down the path.  Even now I protest my friend was guilty of bad manners, though I make every allowance for him; I excuse, I pass the order; but why—­what justifies one man’s bawling out another man’s age?  What purpose does it serve?  I suppose the vicar wished to reassure his wife, on the principle (I have heard him enunciate it) that the sexes are merged at fifty—­by which he means, I must presume, that something which may be good or bad, and is generally silly—­of course, I admire and respect modesty and pudeur as much as any man—­something has gone:  a recognition of the bounds of division.  There is, if that is a lamentable matter, a loss of certain of our young tricks at fifty.  We have ceased to blush readily:  and let me ask you to define a blush.  Is it an involuntary truth or an ingenuous lie?  I know that this will sound like the language of a man not a little jealous of his youthful compeers.  I can but leave it to rightly judging persons to consider whether a healthy man in his prime, who has enough, and is not cursed by ambition, need be jealous of any living soul.

A shriek from Miss Alice checked my retreating steps.  The vicar was staggering to support the breathing half of his partner while she regained her footing in the bed of the river.  Their effort to scale the camshot had failed.  Happily at this moment I caught sight of Master Frank’s boat, which had floated, bottom upwards, against a projecting mud-bank of forget-me-nots.  I contrived to reach it and right it, and having secured one of the sculls, I pulled up to the rescue; though not before I had plucked a flower, actuated by a motive that I cannot account for.  The vicar held the boat firmly against the camshot, while I, at the imminent risk of joining them (I shall not forget the combined expression of Miss Alice’s retreating eyes and the malicious corners of her mouth) hoisted the lady in, and the river with her.  From the seat of the boat she stood sufficiently high to project the step towards land without peril.  When she had set her foot there, we all assumed an attitude of respectful attention, and the vicar, who could soar over calamity like a fairweather swallow, acknowledged the return of his wife to the element with a series of apologetic yesses and short coughings.

‘That would furnish a good concert for the poets,’ he remarked.  ’A parting, a separation of lovers; “even as a body from the watertorn,” or “from the water plucked”; eh? do you think—­“so I weep round her, tearful in her track,” an excellent—­’

But the outraged woman, dripping in grievous discomfort above him, made a peremptory gesture.

’Mr. Amble, will you come on shore instantly, I have borne with your stupidity long enough.  I insist upon your remembering, sir, that you have a family dependent upon you.  Other men may commit these follies.’