‘Yes.’  She admitted the rightness of the protest.  ’But I can’t help it.  I was just thinking how he got his feet wet in pushing the boat off.’  She laughed again.  ’When we were safely off, someone came down to the shore and shouted to Mr Fuge to bring the boat back.  You know his quick way of talking.’ (Here she began to imitate Fuge.) ’"I’ve quarrelled with the man this boat belongs to.  Awful feud!  Fact is, I’m in a hostile country here!” And a lot more like that.  It seemed he had quarrelled with everybody in Ilam.  He wasn’t sure if the landlord of the hotel would let him sleep there again.  He told us all about all his quarrels, until he dropped one of the oars.  I shall never forget how funny he looked in the moonlight when he dropped the oar.  “There, that’s your fault!” he said.  “You make me talk too much about myself, and I get excited.”  He kept striking matches to look for the oar, and turning the boat round and round with the other oar.  “Last match!” he said.  “We shall never see land tonight.”  Then he found the oar again.  He considered we were saved.  Then he began to tell us about his aunt.  “You know I’d no business to be here.  I came down from London for my aunt’s funeral, and here I am in a boat at night with two pretty girls!” He said the funeral had taught him one thing, and that was that black neckties were the only possible sort of necktie.  He said the greatest worry of his life had always been neckties; but he wouldn’t have to worry any more, and so his aunt hadn’t died for nothing.  I assure you he kept on talking about neckties.  I assure you, Mr Loring, I went to sleep—­at least I dozed—­and when I woke up he was still talking about neckties.  But then his feet began to get cold.  I suppose it was because they were wet.  The way he grumbled about his feet being cold!  I remember he turned his coat collar up.  He wanted to get on shore and walk, but he’d taken us a long way up the lake by that time, and he saw we were absolutely lost.  So he put the oars in the boat and stood up and stamped his feet.  It might have upset the boat.’

‘How did it end?’ I inquired.

’Well, Annie and I caught the train, but only just.  You see it was a special train, so they kept it for us, otherwise we should have been in a nice fix.’

‘So you have special trains in these parts?’

’Why, of course!  It was the annual outing of the teachers of St Luke’s Sunday School and their friends, you see.  So we had a special train.’

At this point the duettists came to the end of a movement, and Mr Brindley leaned over to us from his stool, glass in hand.

‘The railway company practically owns Ilam,’ he explained, ’and so they run it for all they’re worth.  They made the lake, to feed the canals, when they bought the canals from the canal company.  It’s an artificial lake, and the railway runs alongside it.  A very good scheme of the company’s.  They started out to make Ilam a popular resort, and they’ve made it a popular resort, what with special trains and things.  But try to get a special train to any other place on their rotten system, and you’ll soon see!’