He was as nearly rude to Miss Bentley on the drive down as he ever permitted himself to be to a lady. She described him to herself, with some ladylike resentment, as grumpy. He did not seem to think the day fine, nor the drive pleasant, nor to admire the lovely view of the river, which moved her to unusual warmth of expression. Down at the canal side, just where once the _Sarah Dawkes_ had been moored, with a delirious, broken girl aboard her, stood Rona, upright as a dart, her punt-pole in her hand. She wore a pale silvery green washing silk. The masses of her hair were glorious under the shade of her sweeping hat. "You are never going to punt to-day, Rona?" cried the Squire, quite sharply. "Do you realize that we have to get up to Newark?" She raised her glorious eyes, full of astonishment at his unwonted petulance--an astonishment which made him hot all over. "Of course not. I am only steadying the boats," she said, with a chill in that voice that was, to him, the barometer of his happiness. "I had arranged to scull this boat with you." His heart leaped. "Oh, Miss Leigh, I don't think that is fair," broke in Captain Legge, a young man who admired Rona considerably. "You and Vanston are such swells, you must not pull together. I will go in your boat, and he had better come here." "Yes," cried the lady in this boat, "and here is room for Miss Bentley in the stern." Legge swiftly stepped into Rona's boat, and it would have been hard to dislodge him without more commotion being made than the Squire approved. He had to go with the other party, and to start for the day with the remembrance that he had spoken sharply to his adored, and had no chance to apologize. Myrtle could not scull; well and good. But she thought she could steer, and was deceived in her opinion. This was very bad indeed. All the way up, the temper of the young man was continually chafed, and he had to go on smiling at her well-meant apologies, as she bumped the boat under every one of the tiny bridges which span the stream thereabouts, and must be shot, sculls shipped, by an experienced "cox." It was nearly a quarter to two when they at last piloted their tiny fleet up the deep dykes, once cut by the monks for the due supply of their Abbey, placed with rare felicity among the windings of many streams. Little as survives of the fabric, the situation of Newark renders it a particularly pathetic ruin. On this day the sun poured down upon the meadow-sweet, drawing up its fragrance in gusts of perfume; the track of each rill was marked by a fringe of purple loose-strife; and among the forget-me-nots darted dragon-flies, like moving gems, over the surface of the quiet waters.