amusement, the house-boat _Purple Emperor_ came to a stop outside, and
breakfasted in the most shameless domesticity. Then one afternoon, the
captain of a slow-moving barge began a quarrel with his wife as they
came into sight from the left, and had carried it to personal violence
before he vanished behind the window-frame to the right. Bailey
regarded all this as an entertainment got up to while away his
illness, and applauded all the more moving incidents. Mrs Green,
coming in at rare intervals with his meals, would catch him clapping
his hands or softly crying, "Encore!" But the river players had other
engagements, and his encore went unheeded.

"I should never have thought I could take such an interest in things
that did not concern me," said Bailey to Wilderspin, who used to come
in in his nervous, friendly way and try to comfort the sufferer by
being talked to. "I thought this idle capacity was distinctive of
little children and old maids. But it's just circumstances. I simply
can't work, and things have to drift; it's no good to fret and
struggle. And so I lie here and am as amused as a baby with a rattle,
at this river and its affairs.

"Sometimes, of course, it gets a bit dull, but not often.

"I would give anything, Wilderspin, for a swamp--just one swamp--once.
Heads swimming and a steam launch to the rescue, and a chap or so
hauled out with a boat-hook.... There goes Fitzgibbon's launch! They
have a new boat-hook, I see, and the little blackie is still in the
dumps. I don't think he's very well, Wilderspin. He's been like that
for two or three days, squatting sulky-fashion and meditating over the
churning of the water. Unwholesome for him to be always staring at the
frothy water running away from the stern."