‘Oh’ cried she, with a toss of her head; I wet feet never hurt young people.’

There was matter for an admonitory lecture in this.  Let me confess I was about to give it, when she added:  But Mr. Pollingray, I am really afraid that your feet are wet!  You had to step into the water when you righted the boat: 

My reply was to jump down by her side with as much agility as I could combine with a proper discretion.  The amateur craft rocked threateningly, and I found myself grasped by and grasping the pretty damsel, until by great good luck we were steadied and preserved from the same misfortune which had befallen her parents.  She laughed and blushed, and we tottered asunder.

‘Would you have talked metaphysics to me in the water, Mr. Pollingray?’

Alice was here guilty of one of those naughty sort of innocent speeches smacking of Eve most strongly; though, of course, of Eve in her best days.

I took the rudder lines to steer against the sculling of her single scull, and was Adam enough to respond to temptation:  ’I should perhaps have been grateful to your charitable construction of it as being metaphysics.’

She laughed colloquially, to fill a pause.  It had not been coquetry:  merely the woman unconsciously at play.  A man is bound to remember the seniority of his years when this occurs, for a veteran of ninety and a worn out young debauchee will equally be subject to it if they do not shun the society of the sex.  My long robust health and perfect self-reliance apparently tend to give me unguarded moments, or lay me open to fitful impressions.  Indeed there are times when I fear I have the heart of a boy, and certainly nothing more calamitous can be conceived, supposing that it should ever for one instant get complete mastery of my head.  This is the peril of a man who has lived soberly.  Do we never know when we are safe?  I am, in reflecting thereupon, positively prepared to say that if there is no fool like what they call an old fool (and a man in his prime, who can be laughed at, is the world’s old fool) there is wisdom in the wild oats theory, and I shall come round to my nephew’s way of thinking:  that is, as far as Master Charles by his acting represents his thinking.  I shall at all events be more lenient in my judgement of him, and less stern in my allocutions, for I shall have no text to preach from.

We picked up the hat and the scull in one of the little muddy bays of our brown river, forming an amphitheatre for water-rats and draped with great dockleaves, nettle-flowers, ragged robins, and other weeds for which the learned young lady gave the botanical names.  It was pleasant to hear her speak with the full authority of absolute knowledge of her subject.  She has intelligence.  She is decidedly too good for Charles, unless he changes his method of living.

‘Shall we row on?’ she asked, settling her arms to work the pair of sculls.