‘No, Empress; as it’s all down stream we of the sterner sex will relieve you of the duty. Besides, you could never row comfortably in that go-to-meeting get-up,’ said Gerald, looking critically at Daphne’s straw-coloured Indian silk, embroidered with scarlet poppies and amber wheat-ears, and fluffy with soft lace about the neck and arms, and the Swiss milkmaid’s hat with its wreath of cornflowers. ‘I could not wear a boating-dress, as we are to dine with Mrs. Turchill,’ said Daphne. ‘You might have worn what you liked,’ protested Edgar eagerly, ‘but you look so lovely in that yellow gown that I shall be pleased for my mother to see you in it. She is weak about gowns. I believe she has a wardrobe full of gorgeous attire, which she and Deborah review once a week, but which nobody ever wears.’ ‘The gowns will do for the chair-covers of a future generation,’ said Gerald; ‘all the chair-covers in my mother’s morning-room are made out of the Court trains of her grandmothers and great-aunts. I believe a Court mantle in those days consumed two yards and a half of stuff.’ He had taken off his coat, and bared his arms to above the elbow. ‘What a splendid stroke you pull still, Goring!’ said Edgar admiringly, ‘and you have the wrist of a navvy.’ ‘One of my paternal inheritances,’ answered Gerald coolly; ‘you know my father was a navvy.’ At which frank speech everybody in the boat blushed except the speaker. ‘He must have been a glorious fellow,’ faltered Edgar, after an awkward pause. ‘Any man who can make a million of money, and keep it without leaving speck or flaw upon his good name, must be a glorious fellow,’ answered Gerald, with more heartiness than was usual to him. ‘My father lived to do good to others as well as to himself, and went down to his grave honoured and beloved. I wish I were more like him.’ ‘That’s the nicest thing I ever heard you say,’ exclaimed Daphne. ‘Approbation from Sir Hubert Stanley——,’ murmured Gerald; ‘I am beginning to feel proud of myself.’ They landed at the boat-builder’s below the bridge, hard by that decayed old inn which must have seen courtlier company than the waggoners and wayfarers who drink there now. Then they crossed Sir Hugh Clopton’s granite bridge, and walked through the quiet town to the meadows that lead to Shottery. It is but a mile from the town to the village, a mile of meadow pathway, every step of which is haunted by ghostly footsteps—the Sacred Way of English literature. ‘It’s no use telling me not to talk about him,’ cried Daphne, as she jumped lightly from the top of a stile, the ascent whereof tested the capacity of a fashionable frock; ‘I cannot tread this ground without thinking of him. I am positively bursting with the idea of him.’