about to give it, when she added: But Mr. Pollingray, I am really afraid
that your feet are wet! You had to step into the water when you righted
the boat:

My reply was to jump down by her side with as much agility as I could
combine with a proper discretion. The amateur craft rocked
threateningly, and I found myself grasped by and grasping the pretty
damsel, until by great good luck we were steadied and preserved from the
same misfortune which had befallen her parents. She laughed and blushed,
and we tottered asunder.

'Would you have talked metaphysics to me in the water, Mr. Pollingray?'

Alice was here guilty of one of those naughty sort of innocent speeches
smacking of Eve most strongly; though, of course, of Eve in her best
days.

I took the rudder lines to steer against the sculling of her single
scull, and was Adam enough to respond to temptation: 'I should perhaps
have been grateful to your charitable construction of it as being
metaphysics.'

She laughed colloquially, to fill a pause. It had not been coquetry:
merely the woman unconsciously at play. A man is bound to remember the
seniority of his years when this occurs, for a veteran of ninety and a
worn out young debauchee will equally be subject to it if they do not
shun the society of the sex. My long robust health and perfect self-
reliance apparently tend to give me unguarded moments, or lay me open to
fitful impressions. Indeed there are times when I fear I have the heart
of a boy, and certainly nothing more calamitous can be conceived,