And upon my word I smiled, too, and could, indeed, have laughed outright. But I sat in awe of a fat man on the adjacent seat. He did not belong to that order of lunatics who laugh for nothing in the sunshine. "What we want," he was saying to his companion, "what we want," he said, with his eyes fixed tight upon this April barge, "what we want is a total _change of Government_. Nothin’ won’t ever be right again till we get it." I had a heavy parcel of books on my knee, and to drop them heavily upon his foot had been, as it were, the accident of a moment. But the sweet temperance of springtime had stolen into my blood, and I forbore. Besides which there were the barges and the daffodils, and they were better worth a man’s consideration than this fool. So I looked over the side again, and saw that the barge-man had turned his attention to the cornet-blower, with whom he was exchanging highly flavoured sarcasms. With a view, probably, of adding zest to his humours, and because a springtime madness was upon him, he had changed headgear with his wife, and stood there in her sun-bonnet, grimacing and laughing. He had a long barge-pole in his hand, and somehow—I don’t quite know how it happened—in assuming to hurl that weapon at the cornet-blower, he overbalanced himself, and fell sideways into the water, striking his head as he fell against the side of another barge, which was moored close to his own in that jumble fashion which is peculiar to barges. He came up again almost directly, looking queer in his wife’s sun-bonnet (for he had tied the tapes beneath his chin), and then immediately sank again. The nerveless ineptitude of it all made one angry with the man: it seemed to be wilful. As for the wife, she looked wonderingly over the side, and realisation came to her so slowly that a laugh still flickered faintly on her face when he came up again. Even then, the sound which she uttered was as much like a chuckle as a cry. And when words came to her, they were few enough. "Oh, my pore man!" she moaned. "Oh, my pore man! Oh, my pore man!" And the baby lay on its back, and chuckled knowingly into the petals of a dishevelled daffodil. Our ’bus had made the bend of the canal bank by this time, and now was parallel with the water, and exactly opposite to this barge. Under the united stimulus of instinctive curiosity and instinctive horror, the driver pulled up sharp; and so the ’bus stood still, and we passengers sat there, gaping at that funny thing in the sun-bonnet as it came up for a second time and sank again. "Oh, my pore man! Oh, my pore man!" moaned the wife. And the cornet-blower, pale with horror, still applied himself automatically to the cornet. He had changed his tune since first I heard him, and the aquatic feats of the man in the sun-bonnet were conducted to music, the strains of which, being interpreted into words, ran as follows— Hi! Hi! clear the road For the rowdy, dowdy boys.