the new start of spring,--was it the boy so bred who had spoken to her of a “home,” of steady work, and the commonplace existence of a man who had learned a trade? She wondered with a depth of vague surprise which it would be impossible to put into words--for she herself had no words to express what she meant. Had it not happened to chime in with the longing in her own mind to stay here and see the other boy, whose momentary contact had filled her with such excitement, I don’t know how she would have received Dick’s strange proposal; but in her other agitation it passed without more than an additional but temporary shock of that surprise which Dick constantly gave her; and she did not count the cost of the concession she had made to him--the tacit agreement she had come under to live under a commonplace roof, and confine herself to indoor life during this flush of midsummer weather--for the longing that she had to know something, if only as a distant spectator, of the life and being of that other boy. After a while she roused herself and went over in the ferry-boat to the other side of the river, where were “the rafts” to which Dick looked with so much anxiety and hope. Everything was very still on the rafts at that sunny hour before mid-day, when Eton, shut up in its schoolrooms, did its construing drowsily, and dreamed of the delights of “after twelve” without being able to rush forth and anticipate them. The attendants on the rafts, lightly-clad, softly-stepping figures, in noiseless boating shoes, and such imitation of boating costume as their means could afford, were lounging about with nothing to do, seated on the rails drawling in dreary Berkshire speech, or arranging their boats in readiness for the approaching rush. Dick’s mother approached along the road, without attracting any special observation, and got into conversation with one or two of the men with the ease which attends social intercourse on these levels of life. “If there is a new hand wanted, my lad is dreadful anxious to come,” she said. “Old Harry’s looking for a new lad,” answered the man she addressed. And so the talk began. “There was a kind of an accident on the river last night,” she said, after a while; “one of the gentlemen got his boat upset, and my lad brought it down----” “Lord bless you! call that a haccident?” said her informant; “half-a-dozen of ’em swamps every night. They don’t mind, nor nobody else.” “The name of this one was--Ross, I think,” she said, very slowly; “maybe you’ll know him?” “I know him well enough--he’s in the Victory; not half a bad fellow in his way, but awful sharp, and not a bit of patience. I seed him come in dripping wet. He’s free with his money, and I daresay he’d pay your lad handsome. If I were you I’d speak to old Harry himself about the place; and if you say you’ve a friend or two among them young swells, better luck.” “Is this one what you call a swell?” said the woman.