“All right. Of course we work after tea for two hours more as we settled. That will make five, and one more after Hall.” “And six hours steady work a day,” said Reggie cheerfully, “is as much as is good for any man. I begin not to attend after I have worked, really worked, you know, for six hours.” VI.--THE BABE’S PICNIC. Row, brothers, row, The stream runs slow, _We don’t know how to row_ _And the oars stick so._ LIGHT-BLUE LYRICS. The Babe was no waterman, and he never pretended to be, but this did not prevent his getting up a quiet picnic on the upper river one delightful afternoon towards the end of May. There were only to be four of them, not counting Mr. Sykes--though it was impossible not to count Mr. Sykes, the others being Reggie, Ealing, and Jack Marsden. Marsden, who had once, when a Freshman, been coached on the river, by an angry man in shorts, and had been abandoned as hopeless after his first trial, was naturally supposed by the Babe to be an accomplished oarsman, and to have probed to its depths the nature of boats and oars and stretchers, so he was deputed to find a boat which held four people, several hampers, and a dog, and [Illustration: TRINITY BRIDGE, FROM THE BACKS.] which was warranted not to shy or bolt, and to be quiet with children. It was understood that the Babe was not going to row or steer, his office being merely to provide food for them all, and if possible to prevent Mr. Sykes from leaping overboard when they passed the bathing-sheds, and biting indiscriminately at the bathers, whom for some reason of his own he regarded with peculiar but perfectly ineradicable disfavour. The Babe had taken him up the river only the week before, but opposite the town sheds Sykes had been unable to restrain himself, had jumped off the boat into the water and chased to land a bland and timid shopkeeper, to whom the Babe owed money, so it looked as if it was a put-up job; the man had regained the steps of the bathing-shed only just in time to save himself from being pinned in the calf of the leg. The Babe and Jack were to start from the raft by Trinity at three, and pick up Reggie and Ealing opposite King’s. They were then to row up to Byron’s Pool (so-called because there is no reason to suppose that Byron was not extremely fond of it,) bathe and have tea, and afterwards go a mile or so farther, and have dinner. The Babe who just now was gated at ten, confidently hoped to be home at or before that hour, on the sole ground that Napoleon had once said there was no such word as impossible.