any interruption.

"Ewart, you old Fool," I said, "knock off and come for a day's gossip.
I'm rotten. There's a sympathetic sort of lunacy about you. Let's go to
Staines and paddle up to Windsor."

"Girl?" said Ewart, putting down a chisel.

"Yes."

That was all I told him of my affair.

"I've got no money," he remarked, to clear up ambiguity in my
invitation.

We got a jar of shandy-gaff, some food, and, on Ewart's suggestion,
two Japanese sunshades in Staines; we demanded extra cushions at the
boathouse and we spent an enormously soothing day in discourse and
meditation, our boat moored in a shady place this side of Windsor.
I seem to remember Ewart with a cushion forward, only his heels and
sunshade and some black ends of hair showing, a voice and no more,
against the shining, smoothly-streaming mirror of the trees and bushes.

"It's not worth it," was the burthen of the voice. "You'd better get
yourself a Millie, Ponderevo, and then you wouldn't feel so upset."

"No," I said decidedly, "that's not my way."

A thread of smoke ascended from Ewart for a while, like smoke from an
altar.