The next morning, heavy-headed, thick-tongued, he shifted his eyes sheepishly about the room, while Crowley, from the high ground of his own invincible virtue, talked down to him roundly. He did not interrupt the steady flow of malediction in which his immaculate room-mate seemed determined to engulf him; but when the lecture was ended, he looked up, steadily, and said: "Never mind, old top, it's the last; on the square it is." As he had a perfect right to do under the circumstances, Crowley shrugged his shoulders, and looked out the window into the green of a maple. "All right, old top," Houston driveled on pathetically--"mebbe I've said it before; but this time I mean it--see if I don't." And he reached across the table for a bottle of bitters. He poured half a small glass with shaking hands. Over the edge of the drink he perceived the sneer on Crowley's face. He set the glass and bottle on the _chiffonier_ carefully. "Confound you! don't you believe me, you white-ribbon parson!" he cried. Crowley smiled broadly. Houston seized the glass. "There!" he exclaimed--"Now do you believe me?--Not even a bracer!" And he flung glass and liquor into the waste-paper basket. Crowley laughed aloud at that, and went down-stairs, and Houston, as he finished dressing, heard him talking to the landlady's collie on the front porch. For that afternoon--it being Saturday--he had planned a boating trip, with a picnic supper, down the river. The care-taker at the boathouse helped him tote the canoe around the dam, while Florence, her face shaded by the blue parasol she carried, stood on the bank by the railway. Her hamper was stowed away securely, and while the man held fast to the frail craft, Houston lifted her fairly from the ground and set her, fluffy and cool, in the bow where he had arranged the cushions. To the attendant music of many little cries of half fright, the canoe, at one sweep of the paddle, shot into midstream. The river was unusually high; the spring rains had been frequent and plentiful, and now the water ran flush with the green banks on either side. Past the ivy-hung station they drifted with the current. Florence sat silent among the cushions watching the rhythmic, graceful sweep of the paddle, strongly, evenly manipulated by her flannel-clad gondolier. It was an occasion for unvoiced enjoyment. On the left rose the hills--threaded by the winding, white boulevard--thick with greenery, through which now and then were to be caught glimpses of The Hermitage--poised obliquely on the hillside, a sheer declivity falling from its broad canopied piazza. Skirting the bank, the passage of the canoe wrought havoc among the birds, and they flew to and fro across the stream, or, hopping nervously from branch to branch, screamed their displeasure at the rude invasion of their domestic quiet.