She turns away, and her look grows vague. She is thinking of her home. I try to imagine it; and cannot. I try to imagine her cousins: rough boys and girls, sharp-faced like her, sharp-tongued, sharp-fingered— Her fingers are blunt, however; though her tongue—for sometimes, when putting the pins to my hair, or frowning over
slithering laces, she shows it—her tongue has a point. I watch her sigh.
''Never mind,'' I say—like any kindly mistress with an unhappy maid. ''Look, here is a barge. You may send your wishes with it. We shall both send wishes, to London.'' To London, I think again, more darkly. Richard is there. I will be there, a month from now. I say, ''The Thames will take them, even if the boat does not.''
She looks, however, not at the barge, but at me.
''The Thames?'' she says. *
''The river,'' I answer. ''This river, here.''◎◎
''This trifling bit of water, the Thames? Oh, no, miss.'' She laughs, uncertainly. ''How can that be? The Thames is very wide''— she holds her hands far apart—''and this is narrow. Do you see?''
I say, after a moment, that I have always supposed that rivers grow wider as they flow. She shakes her head.
''This trifling bit of water?'' she says again. ''Why, the water we have from our taps, at home, has more life to it than this.—There, miss! Look, there.'' The barge has passed us. Its stern is marked in six-inch letters, ROTHERHITHE; but she is pointing, not to them, but to the wake of grease spreading out from the spluttering engine. ''See that?'' she says excitedly. ''That''s how the Thames looks. That''s how the Thames looks, every day of the year. Look at all those colours. A thousand colours ..."