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 parterre of flowerpots. Children played on the decks, as heedless of the rain as if they had been brought up on Loch Garron side; men fished over the gunwale, some of them under umbrellas; women did their washing; and every barge boasted its mongrel cur by way of watch-dog. Each one barked furiously at the canoes, running alongside until he had got to the end of his own ship, and so passing on the word to the dog aboard the next. We must have seen something like a hundred of these embarkations in the course of that day's paddle, ranged one after another like the houses in a street; and from not one of them were we disappointed of this accompaniment. It was like visiting a menageric, the Cigarette remarked.

These little cities by the canal side had a very odd effect upon the mind. They seemed, with their flowerpots and smoking chimneys, their washings and dinners, a rooted piece of nature in