“Come along and you’ll see him still if you want to,” said the lad, “I know what them swells do. They go down to the rafts and takes off their wet things, and puts on their coats and chimney-pots. He’s a good un to look at, I can tell you; but you never see nothing that’s under your nose, mother. You get curious-like when anything’s past.” “Don’t stand talking,” said the woman with a tremulous impatience, “but come on.” Dick obeyed promptly; but it is not so easy to walk quickly, towing a troublesome outrigger with its projecting rowlocks, when there is no one in it to guide its course along the inequalities of the bank. The woman bore this delay with nervous self-restraint as long as she could, then telling him she would wait for him, pursued her way rapidly alone to the rafts, which were crowded by boys arriving and departing in every possible stage of undress. She waited wistfully at the gate, not venturing to enter the railed-off enclosure, which was sacred to the boats and “the gentlemen;” and when Val issued forth in correct Eton dress, she did not recognise him. She stood there in tremulous and passionate agitation--suppressed, it is true, but intense--gazing wistfully at the crowds of moving figures, all bearing that resemblance to each other which boys undergoing the same training and wearing the same dress so often do. She could not identify any one, and she was growing sick and faint with weariness, and with the beating of her heart. “Here I am, mother; did you see him?” said Dick, appearing at last, tired but pleased, with his awkward charge. “How was I to know him?” she asked, sharply; “I did not see his face. As to who he is, Dick, it’s a name I once knew. I wish I had seen him; but it’s my luck, always my luck.”