Delphi Complete Works of Jerome K. Jerome (Illustrated) (Series Four) by Jerome K. Jerome

an occasional flicker of water from going over those dresses.
    The girls did not complain, but they huddled up close together, and set their lips firm, and every time a drop touched them, they visibly shrank and shuddered. It was a noble sight to see them suffering thus in silence, but it unnerved me altogether. I am too sensitive. I got wild and fitful in my rowing, and splashed more and more, the harder I tried not to.
    I gave it up at last; I said I’d row bow. Bow thought the arrangement would be better too, and we changed places. The ladies gave an involuntary sigh of relief when they saw me go, and quite brightened up for a moment. Poor girls! they had better have put up with me. The man they had got now was a jolly, light-hearted, thick-headed sort of a chap, with about as much sensitiveness in him as there might be in a Newfoundland puppy. You might look daggers at him for an hour and he would not notice it, and it would not trouble him if he did. He set a good, rollicking, dashing stroke that sent the spray playing all over the boat like a fountain, and made the whole crowd sit up straight in no time. When he spread more than pint of water over one of those dresses, he would give a pleasant little laugh, and say:
    “I beg your pardon, I’m sure;” and offer them his handkerchief to wipe it off with.
    “Oh, it’s of no consequence,” the poor girls would murmur in reply, and covertly draw rugs and coats over themselves, and try and protect themselves with their lace parasols.
    At lunch they had a very bad time of it. People wanted them to sit on the grass, and the grass was dusty; and the tree-trunks, against which they were invited to lean, did not appear to have been brushed for weeks; so they spread their handkerchiefs on the ground and sat on those, bolt upright. Somebody, in walking about with a plate of beef-steak pie, tripped up over a root, and sent the pie flying. None of it went over them, fortunately, but the accident suggested a fresh danger to them, and agitated them; and, whenever anybody moved about, after that, with anything in his hand that could fall and make a mess, they watched that person with growing anxiety until he sat down again.

    “Now then, you girls,” said our friend Bow to them, cheerily, after it was all over, “come along, you’ve got to wash up!”
    They didn’t understand him at first. When they grasped the idea, they said they feared they did not know how to wash up.
    “Oh, I’ll soon show you,” he cried; “it’s rare fun! You lie down on your — I mean you lean over the bank, you know, and sloush the things about in the water.”
    The elder sister said that she was afraid that they hadn’t got on dresses suited to the work.
    “Oh, they’ll be all right,” said he light-heartedly; “tuck ’em up.”
    And he made them do it, too. He told them that that sort of thing was half the fun of a picnic. They said it was very interesting.
    Now I come to think it over, was that young man as dense-headed as we thought? or was he — no, impossible! there was such a simple, child-like expression about him!
    Harris wanted to get out at Hampton Church, to go and see Mrs. Thomas’s tomb.
    “Who is Mrs. Thomas?” I asked.
    “How should I know?” replied Harris. “She’s a lady that’s got a funny tomb, and I want to see it.”
    I objected. I don’t know whether it is that I am built wrong, but I never did seem to hanker after tombstones myself. I know that the proper thing to do, when you get to a village or town, is to rush off to the churchyard, and enjoy the graves; but it is a recreation that I always deny myself. I take no interest in creeping round dim and chilly churches behind wheezy old men, and reading epitaphs. Not even the sight of a bit of cracked brass let into a stone affords me what I call real happiness.
    I shock respectable sextons by the imperturbability I am able to assume before exciting inscriptions, and by my lack of enthusiasm for the local