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“Waal,” said the skipper, “‘taint much that is to be done, and Zekiel and I calc’late to do most of that and there’s that blamed boy beside–“

This adjective “blamed” is the virtuous oath by which simple people, who are improving their habits, cure themselves of a stronger epithet, as men take to flagroot who are abandoning tobacco.

“He ain’t good for nothin’, as you see,” continued the skipper meditatively, “and you air, anybody can see that,” he added. “Ef you’ve mind to come to Albany, you can have your vittles, poor enough they are too; and ef you are willing to ride sometimes, you can ride. I guess where there’s room for three in the bunks there’s room for four. ‘Taint everybody would have cast off that blamed hawser-rope as neat as you did.”

From which last remark I inferred, what I learned as a certainty as we travelled farther, that but for the timely assistance I had rendered him I should have plead for my passage in vain.

This was my introduction to Fausta. That is to say, she heard the whole of the conversation. The formal introduction, which is omitted in no circle of American life to which I have ever been admitted, took place at tea half an hour after, when Mrs. Grills, who always voyaged with her husband, brought in the flapjacks from the kitchen. “Miss Jones,” said Grills, as I came into the meal, leaving Zekiel at the tiller,–“Miss Jones, this is a young man who is going to Albany. I don’t rightly know how to call your name, sir.” I said my name was Carter. Then he said, “Mr. Carter, this is Miss Jones. Mrs. Grills, Mr. Carter. Mr. Carter, Mrs. Grills. She is my wife.” And so our partie carree was established for the voyage.

In these days there are few people who know that a journey on a canal is the pleasantest journey in the world. A canal has to go through fine scenery. It cannot exist unless it follow through the valley of a stream. The movement is so easy that, with your eyes shut, you do not know you move. The route is so direct, that when you are once shielded from the sun, you are safe for hours. You draw, you read, you write, or you sew, crochet, or knit. You play on your flute or your guitar, without one hint of inconvenience. At a “low bridge” you duck your head lest you lose your hat,–and that reminder teaches you that you are human. You are glad to know this, and you laugh at the memento. For the rest of the time you journey, if you are “all right” within, in elysium.

I rode one of those horses perhaps two or three hours a day. At locks I made myself generally useful. At night I walked the deck till one o’clock, with my pipe or without it, to keep guard against the lock-thieves. The skipper asked me sometimes, after he found I could “cipher,” to disentangle some of the knots in his bills of lading for him. But all this made but a little inroad in those lovely autumn days, and for the eight days that we glided along,–there is one blessed level which is seventy miles long,–I spent most of my time with Fausta. We walked together on the tow-path to get our appetites for dinner and for supper. At sunrise I always made a cruise inland, and collected the gentians and black alder-berries and colored leaves, with which she dressed Mrs. Grill’s table. She took an interest in my wretched sketch-book, and though she did not and does not draw well, she did show me how to spread an even tint, which I never knew before. I was working up my French. She knew about as much and as little as I did, and we read Mad. Reybaud’s Clementine together, guessing at the hard words, because we had no dictionary.