He knelt down in our boat and she in hers, and the usual fumbling took place over hanging the rudder on its hooks; for, as you may imagine, no change had taken place in the arrangement of such an unimportant matter as the rudder of a pleasure- boat.

As the two beautiful young faces bent over the rudder, they seemed to me to be very close together, and though it only lasted a moment, a sort of pang shot through me as I looked on.

Clara sat in her place and did not look round, but presently she said, with just the least stiffness in her tone: "How shall we divide?
Won't you go into Ellen's boat, Dick, since, without offence to our guest, you are the better sculler ?" Dick stood up and laid his hand on her shoulder, and said: "No, no; let Guest try what he can do--he ought to be getting into training now.
Besides, we are in no hurry: we are not going far above Oxford; and even if we are benighted, we shall have the moon, which will give us nothing worse of a night than a greyer day." "Besides," said I, "I may manage to do a little more with my sculling than merely keeping the boat from drifting down stream." They all laughed at this, as if it had a been very good joke; and I thought that Ellen's laugh, even amongst the others, was one of the pleasantest sounds I had ever heard.
To be short, I got into the new-come boat, not a little elated, and taking the sculls, set to work to show off a little.

For--must I say it ?--I felt as if even that happy world were made the happier for my being so near this strange girl; although I must say that of all the persons I had seen in that world renewed, she was the most unfamiliar to me, the most unlike what I could have thought of.

Clara, for instance, beautiful and bright as she was, was not unlike a _very_ pleasant and unaffected young lady; and the other girls also seemed nothing more than specimens of very much improved types which I had known in other times.
But this girl was not only beautiful with a beauty quite different from that of "a young lady," but was in all ways so strangely interesting; so that I kept wondering what she would say or do next to surprise and please me.