I wondered as I walked on--I have wondered before and since--whether Art,
even with a capital A, is quite worth all the suffering that is inflicted
in her behalf--whether she and we are better for all the scorning and the
sneering, all the envying and the hating, that is done in her name.

Jephson arrived about nine o'clock in the ferry-boat. We were made
acquainted with this fact by having our heads bumped against the sides of
the saloon.

Somebody or other always had their head bumped whenever the ferry-boat
arrived. It was a heavy and cumbersome machine, and the ferry-boy was
not a good punter. He admitted this frankly, which was creditable of
him. But he made no attempt to improve himself; that is, where he was
wrong. His method was to arrange the punt before starting in a line with
the point towards which he wished to proceed, and then to push hard,
without ever looking behind him, until something suddenly stopped him.
This was sometimes the bank, sometimes another boat, occasionally a
steamer, from six to a dozen times a day our riparian dwelling. That he
never succeeded in staving the houseboat in speaks highly for the man who
built her.

One day he came down upon us with a tremendous crash. Amenda was walking
along the passage at the moment, and the result to her was that she
received a violent blow first on the left side of her head and then on
the right.

She was accustomed to accept one bump as a matter of course, and to
regard it as an intimation from the boy that he had come; but this double
knock annoyed her: so much "style" was out of place in a mere ferry-boy.