"That, curiously enough, was an inquiry which I was about to address to you."
The stroke of the four diverted public attention from me by falling foul of the lady who was supposed--it was the purest supposition--to be acting as coxswain.
"Don't pull both strings at once! Pull this 'and, now pull the other! Don't I tell you not to pull both strings at once! What d'yer think yer doin'?"
"Fust you says pull this 'and, then you says pull that 'and, 'ow am I to know?"
A gentleman in the double skiff interposed.
"That's right, my little dear, don't you tyke none of 'is lip. You jump inter the water and swim to me, I'll look arter yer!"
Apparently this gentleman had forgotten that there was somebody else whom it was his duty to look after, a fact of which he was suddenly reminded.
"I'm sure if the lydy'd like to chynge places with me, I'm willin'; it don't myke no manner o' odds to me. If this is your idea of lookin' arter a lydy, it ain't mine, that's all I sye."
When I at last drew clear they still were wrangling. I have a faint recollection that the ladies were threatening to "mark" each other, or anybody else who wanted it. It seemed clear that their ideas of pleasure were inseparably associated with words of a kind.