night.

Friends would come down to spend the day with us--elderly, irritable
people, fond of warmth and comfort; people who did not, as a rule, hanker
after jaunts, even under the most favourable conditions; but who had been
persuaded by our silly talk that a day on the river would be to them like
a Saturday to Monday in Paradise.

They would arrive soaked; and we would shut them up in different bunks,
and leave them to strip themselves and put on things of Ethelbertha's or
of mine. But Ethel and I, in those days, were slim, so that stout,
middle-aged people in our clothes neither looked well nor felt happy.

Upon their emerging we would take them into the saloon and try to
entertain them by telling them what we had intended to do with them had
the day been fine. But their answers were short, and occasionally
snappy, and after a while the conversation would flag, and we would sit
round reading last week's newspapers and coughing.

The moment their own clothes were dry (we lived in a perpetual atmosphere
of steaming clothes) they would insist upon leaving us, which seemed to
me discourteous after all that we had done for them, and would dress
themselves once more and start off home, and get wet again before they
got there.

We would generally receive a letter a few days afterwards, written by
some relative, informing us that both patients were doing as well as
could be expected, and promising to send us a card for the funeral in
case of a relapse.