But he _did_ stay, and although Jimmie was furious, he had every
intention of letting him have his bedroom again, which Bee and I so
fiercely resented that we locked Jimmie in his stateroom, where, after a
few feeble pounds on the door, he resigned himself to his fate and got
the only night's sleep that he had in the eight days of Henley.

Whether the Honourable Edwardes Edwardes slept on his side on the bench
or on his back on the dinner-table, or stood up all night, we never
knew. He was a little cross at breakfast, and complained of feeling "a
bit stiff." But nobody petted or sympathised with him or ran for the
liniment. So by luncheon time he was drinking Jimmie's champagne again
with the utmost good humour.

One of the most amusing things we did was to go after dinner in little
boats and form part of the river audience in front of some other
house-boat where something was going on,--crowded in between other
boats, having to ship our oars and pull ourselves along by our
neighbours' gunwales, getting locked for perhaps half an hour, until
suddenly our Geisha girls or niggers would start the cry "Up river,"
when away we would all go, entertainers and entertained, pulling up the
river to the lights of another house-boat, enjoying the music for a few
minutes and then slipping away in the darkness toward the lights of
Henley village, or perhaps back to the _Lulu_.

Once or twice a boat would capsize, giving the occupants a severe
wetting, but as river costumes are always washable and the river is not
deep, no harm ever seemed to come of these aquatic diversions. Once,
however, it was brought near home in this wise.

Jimmie invited his wife to go canoeing. I went canoeing once on the