It was the boy come back with the vegetables.

If we were reading, "Ya-ho, hie!" and some one had to cross for that boy and the water-can.
The boy was on the tow-path just when we had fallen into a snooze; he had to be taken across for the milk immediately we had lighted our pipes.

On the whole, it is an open question whether it was not even more annoying to take him over than to go for him.

Two or three times we tried to be sociable and went into the village together; but no sooner had we begun to enjoy ourselves than we remembered that we must go back and let the boy ashore.

Tennyson speaks of a company making believe to be merry while all the time the spirit of a departed one haunted them in their play.