"I got a raise of five bob when I went back and ten bob besides from the
boss.
"I ought to have stayed at the law, sor; I'd be a magistrate by now
a-sittin' on a sheepskin instead of ------
"Where'll I put this big canvas, sor--up agin the bow or laid flat? The
last coat ain't dry yet," he muttered to himself, touching my picture
with his finger in true paper-hanger style. "Oh, yes, I see--all ready,
sor, ye kin step in. Same place we painted yesterday, sor?--up near the
mill? All right, sor." And we pushed out into the stream.
These talks with Fin are like telephone messages from the great city
hardly an hour away. They always take place in the open, while I am
floating among pond-lilies or drifting under wide-spreading trees, their
drooping leaves dabbling in the silent current like children's fingers,
or while I am sitting under skies as blue as any that bend above my
Beloved City by the Sea; often, too, when the delicious silence about
me is broken only by the lapping of the water around my punt, the
sharpening of a bit of charcoal, or the splash of a fish.
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