"The Park!" said Dick; "why, the whole Thames-side is a park this
time of the year; and for my part, I had rather lie under an elm-tree
on the borders of a wheat-field, with the bees humming about me and
the corn-crake crying from furrow to furrow, than in any park in
England. Besides--"

"Besides," said she, "you want to get on to your dearly-loved upper
Thames, and show your prowess down the heavy swathes of the mowing
grass."

She looked at him fondly, and I could tell that she was seeing him in
her mind's eye showing his splendid form at its best amidst the
rhymed strokes of the scythes; and she looked down at her own pretty
feet with a half sigh, as though she were contrasting her slight
woman's beauty with his man's beauty; as women will when they are
really in love, and are not spoiled with conventional sentiment.

As for Dick, he looked at her admiringly a while, and then said at
last: "Well, Clara, I do wish we were there! But, hilloa! we are
getting back way." And he set to work sculling again, and in two
minutes we were all standing on the gravelly strand below the bridge,
which, as you may imagine, was no longer the old hideous iron
abortion, but a handsome piece of very solid oak framing.

We went into the Court and straight into the great hall, so well
remembered, where there were tables spread for dinner, and everything
arranged much as in Hammersmith Guest-Hall. Dinner over, we
sauntered through the ancient rooms, where the pictures and tapestry
were still preserved, and nothing was much changed, except that the
people whom we met there had an indefinable kind of look of being at