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A man, a girl, and a little child stood together, just above the wooden landing-steps, and a Canadian canoe, brilliant with newness and varnish, flaring with flame-coloured cushions, rocked gently on the water at their feet.

The youn
g man who held the painter in his hand, was dressed in immaculate white flannel, wore a pink and white striped shirt, and a waistkerchief of crimson silk.

The girl was the boating-girl of the stage. Where the rushes fringed the lawn you looked instinctively for footlights. The open-work silk stockings, the patent leather evening shoes, the silver belt compressing a waist of seventeen inches, were all so thoroughly theatrical. So was her costume of pale blue and white; so was the knot of broad ribbon fastening her sailor collar; so was the Jack Tar cap, with its blue and silver binding, set slightly on one side of her dark head. The child by her side was dressed in white embroidered muslin and a sun-bonnet.

“I say, West,” cried the man who steered, “you who know all the actresses, tell us who’s that little girl there, with the kid.”

West, who was sculling, turned his head.

“Oh, damn! it’s Mrs. Catterson,” he said, with the emphasis of a surprise, which is a disagreeable one.

Since the marriage, he had not seen very much of Nettie Catterson, although he was godfather to the boy. For one thing, it is difficult to see much of people who live in the suburbs; and though Catterson had moved twice, first from Teddington to Kingston, then from Kingston to Surbition Hill, where he was now a householder, Surbition remained equally out of West’s way.

But there was another reason for his evasion of the constant invitations which Catterson pressed upon him in the City. It had not taken him long to perceive that he was far from being persona non gratato Mrs. Catterson. Whether this was to be accounted for by the average woman’s inevitable jealousy of her husband’s friends, whether it was she suspected his opposition to her marriage, or whether she could not forgive him for having known her while she was passing as Mrs. Gray, he could not determine. Probably her dislike was compounded of all three reasons, with a preponderance, he thought, in favour of the last.

For with marriage, with the possession of a semi-detached villa at Surbiton, and the entrance into such society as a visit from the clergyman’s wife may open the door to, Nettie had become of an amazing conventionality, and surpassing Catterson himself in the matter of deference to Mrs. Grundy, she seemed to have set herself the task of atoning for irregularity of conduct in the past, by the severest reprobation of all who erred in the present; and West’s ribaldry in conversation, his light views on serious subjects, and his habitual desecration of the Sunday, were themes for her constant animadversions and displeasure.

It was the rapid résuméof these, his demerits with Mrs. Catterson, which had called forth his energetic “Damn!”

At the same moment that he recognised her, Catterson recognised him, and sung out a welcome. The boat was brought alongside, and he was received by Nettie with a warmth which surprised him. His companions, with hasty cap lifting, escaped across the lawn to get drinks at the bar, and secure beds for the night.

He looked after them with envy, and found himself obliged to accept Nettie’s invitation to tea.

“We were just quarrelling, Jack and,” she said, “where to have it. He wants to go down to Marlow, and I want it here. Now you’ve come, that settles it. We’ll have it here.”

Catterson explained his reason: as Nettie wished to go out in the canoe again, they ought to go now while it was fine, as it was sure to rain later.