Page:Triangles of life, and other stories.djvu/112

 looked just like that—like a bright little doll-housey picture. And Margate from a distance reminded me of one of New Zealand's miniature cities in wood—the open sea-front of Napier, for instance.

The Thames is the Melbourne Yarra on a larger scale, and without the smell.

From the time the fog lifted there was no escape from a confounded bore, who'd been there before, and wanted to point out things. He lived part of the year in Australia and the rest in England. He was not an Englishman, as far as I could see, and not an Australian—nor yet what is next best to it, an Englishman Australianized. He'd been all over the world—he was simply a type of the born-and-bred idiots, who travel to see things, so that they will be able to say that they have seen 'em, and who couldn't describe them any more than they could fly. He hadn't the brains to be a liar—he had no brains at all—he hadn't even any politics.

Every now and again he'd come up and say: " Well, we're in the Thames now—what do you think of it? "

I was leaning over the rail, taking in things quietly, and looking at some old warships cut down to a hulk, when he took a pinch of my arm and stuck his finger out in another direction from that in which I was looking. He paused a moment, as if he was going to say something very impressive, then he said—

" See that boat there? "

I saw a boat like one of our Manly steamers, crowded with holiday people.