for a walk.
It was horriblylonesome and dismal, and all the policemen he met

regarded him with undisguised suspicion, and turned their lanterns on him
and followed him about, and this had such an effect upon him at last that

he began to feel as if he really had done something, and he got to
slinking down the by-streets and hiding in dark doorways when he heard

the regulation flip-flop approaching.
Of course, this conduct made the force only more distrustful of him than

ever, and they would come and rout him out and ask him what he was doing
there; and when he answered, "Nothing," he had merely come out for a

stroll (it was then four o'clock in the morning), they looked as though
they did not believe him, and two plain-clothes constables came home with

him to see if he really did live where he had said he did. They saw him
go in with his key, and then they took up a position opposite and watched

the house.
He thought he would light the fire when he got inside, and make himself

some breakfast, just to pass away the time; but he did not seem able to
handle anything from a scuttleful of coals to a teaspoon without dropping

it or falling over it, and making such a noise that he was in mortal fear
that it would wake Mrs. G. up, and that she would think it was burglars

and open the window and call "Police!" and then these two detectives
would rush in and handcuff him, and march him off to the police-court.

He was in a morbidly nervous state by this time, and he pictured the
trial, and his trying to explain the circumstances to the jury, and

nobody believing him, and his being sentenced to twenty years' penal
servitude, and his mother dying of a broken heart. So he gave up trying

to get breakfast, and wrapped himself up in his overcoat and sat in the
easy-chair till Mrs. G came down at half-past seven.

He said he had never got up too early since that morning: it had been
such a warning to him.

We had been sitting huddled up in our rugs while George had been telling
me this true story, and on his finishing it I set to work to wake up

Harris with a scull. The third prod did it: and he turned over on the
other side, and said he would be down in a minute, and that he would have

his lace-up boots. We soon let him know where he was, however, by the
aid of the hitcher, and he sat up suddenly, sending Montmorency, who had

been sleeping the sleep of the just right on the middle of his chest,
sprawling across the boat.

Then we pulled up the canvas, and all four of us poked our heads out over
the off-side, and looked down at the water and shivered. The idea,

overnight, had been that we should get up early in the morning, fling off
our rugs and shawls, and, throwing back the canvas, spring into the river

with a joyous shout, and revel in a long delicious swim. Somehow, now
the morning had come, the notion seemed less tempting. The water looked

damp and chilly: the wind felt cold.
"Well, who's going to be first in?" said Harris at last.

There was no rush for precedence. George settled the matter so far as he
was concerned by retiring into the boat and pulling on his socks.

Montmorency gave vent to an involuntary howl, as if merely thinking of
the thing had given him the horrors; and Harris said it would be so

difficult to get into the boat again, and went back and sorted out his
trousers.

I did not altogether like to give in, though I did not relish the plunge.
There might be snags about, or weeds, I thought. I meant to compromise

matters by going down to the edge and just throwing the water over
myself; so I took a towel and crept out on the bank and wormed my way

along on to the branch of a tree that dipped down into the water.
It was bitterly cold. The wind cut like a knife. I thought I would not

throw the water over myself after all. I would go back into the boat and
dress; and I turned to do so; and, as I turned, the silly branch gave

way, and I and the towel went in together with a tremendoussplash, and I
was out mid-stream with a gallon of Thames water inside me before I knew

what had happened.
"By Jove! old J.'s gone in," I heard Harris say, as I came blowing to the

surface. "I didn't think he'd have the pluck to do it. Did you?"
"Is it all right?" sung out George.

"Lovely," I spluttered back. "You are duffers not to come in. I
wouldn't have missed this for worlds. Why won't you try it? It only

wants a little determination."
But I could not persuade them.

Rather an amusing thing happened while dressing that morning. I was very
cold when I got back into the boat, and, in my hurry to get my shirt on,

I accidentally jerked it into the water. It made me awfully wild,
especially as George burst out laughing. I could not see anything to

laugh at, and I told George so, and he only laughed the more. I never
saw a man laugh so much. I quite lost my temper with him at last, and I

pointed out to him what a drivelling maniac of an imbecile idiot he was;
but he only roared the louder. And then, just as I was landing the

shirt, I noticed that it was not my shirt at all, but George's, which I
had mistaken for mine; whereupon the humour of the thing struck me for

the first time, and I began to laugh. And the more I looked from
George's wet shirt to George, roaring with laughter, the more I was

amused, and I laughed so much that I had to let the shirt fall back into
the water again.

"Ar'n't you - you - going to get it out?" said George, between his
shrieks.

I could not answer him at all for a while, I was laughing so, but, at
last, between my peals I managed to jerk out:

"It isn't my shirt - it's YOURS!"
I never saw a man's face change from lively to severe so suddenly in all

my life before.
"What!" he yelled, springing up. "You silly cuckoo! Why can't you be

more careful what you're doing? Why the deuce don't you go and dress on
the bank? You're not fit to be in a boat, you're not. Gimme the

hitcher."
I tried to make him see the fun of the thing, but he could not. George

is very dense at seeing a joke sometimes.
Harris proposed that we should have scrambled eggs for breakfast. He

said he would cook them. It seemed, from his account, that he was very
good at doing scrambled eggs. He often did them at picnics and when out

on yachts. He was quite famous for them. People who had once tasted his
scrambled eggs, so we gathered from his conversation, never cared for any

other food afterwards, but pined away and died when they could not get
them.

It made our mouths water to hear him talk about the things, and we handed
him out the stove and the frying-pan and all the eggs that had not

smashed and gone over everything in the hamper, and begged him to begin.
He had some trouble in breaking the eggs - or rather not so much trouble

in breaking them exactly as in getting them into the frying-pan when
broken, and keeping them off his trousers, and preventing them from

running up his sleeve; but he fixed some half-a-dozen into the pan at
last, and then squatted down by the side of the stove and chivied them

about with a fork.
It seemed harassing work, so far as George and I could judge. Whenever

he went near the pan he burned himself, and then he would drop everything
and dance round the stove, flicking his fingers about and cursing the

things. Indeed, every time George and I looked round at him he was sure
to be performing this feat. We thought at first that it was a necessary

part of the culinary arrangements.
We did not know what scrambled eggs were, and we fancied that it must be

some Red Indian or Sandwich Islands sort of dish that required dances and
incantations for its proper cooking. Montmorency went and put his nose

over it once, and the fat spluttered up and scalded him, and then he
began dancing and cursing. Altogether it was one of the most interesting

and exciting operations I have ever witnessed. George and I were both
quite sorry when it was over.

The result was not altogether the success that Harris had anticipated.