cakes an' oranges at the Fair, as the things flew out o' their baskets, an' some o' the cakes was smashed... But they tasted just as good,' added Bob, by way of note or addendum, after a moment's pause.

`But, I say, Bob,' said Tom, in a tone of deliberation, `ferrets are nasty biting things - they'll bite a fellow without being set on.'

`Lors, why that's the beauty on 'em. If a chap lays hold o' your ferret, he won't be long before he hollows out a good un - he won't.'

At this moment a striking incident made the boys pause suddenly in their walk. It was the plunging of some small body in the water from among the neighbouring bulrushes - if it was not a water-rat Bob intimated that he was ready to undergo the most unpleasant consequences.

`Hoigh! Yap - hoigh! there he is,' said Tom, clapping his hands, as the little black snout made its arrowy course to the opposite bank. `Seize him, lad, seize him!'

Yap agitated his ears and wrinkled his brows, but declined to plunge, trying whether barking would not answer the purpose just as well.

`Ugh! you coward!' said Tom, and kicked him over, feeling humiliated as a sportsman to possess so poor-spirited an animal. Bob abstained from remark and passed on, choosing however to walk in the shallow edge of the overflowing river by way of change.

`He's none so full now, the Floss isn't,' said Bob, as he kicked the water up before him, with an agreeable sense of being insolent to it. `Why, last 'ear, the meadows was all one sheet o' water, they was.'

`Ay, but,' said Tom, whose mind was prone to see an opposition between statements that were really quite accordant, `but there was a big flood once when the Round Pool was made. I know there was, 'cause father says so. And the sheep and cows were all drowned, and the boats went all over the fields ever such a way.'

I don't care about a flood comin',' said Bob, `I don't mind the water, no more nor the land. I'd swim - I would.'

`Ah, but if you got nothing to eat for ever so long?' said Tom, his imagination becoming quite active under the stimulus of that dread. `When I'm a man, I shall make a boat with a wooden house on the top of it, like Noah's ark, and keep plenty to eat in it - rabbits and things - all ready. And then if the flood came, you know, Bob, I shouldn't mind... And I'd take you in, if I saw you swimming,' he added, in the tone of a benelovent patron.

`I aren't frighted,' said Bob, to whom hunger did not appear so appalling. `But I'd get in, an' knock the rabbits on th' head when you wanted to eat 'em.'

`Ah, and I should have half-pence, and we'd play at heads and tails,' said Tom, not contemplating the possibility that this recreation might have fewer charms for his mature age. `I'd divide fair to begin with, and then we'd see who'd win.'

`I'n got a half-penny o' my own,' said Bob, proudly, coming out of the water and tossing his half-penny in the air. `Yeads or tails?'

`Tails,' said Tom, instantly fired with the desire to win.

`It's yeads,' said Bob, hastily, snatching up the half-penny as it fell.

`It wasn't,' said Tom, loudly and peremptorily. `You give me the half-penny - I've won it fair.'