The sun was setting in red splendour over the grey and purple hills, and the canal lay smooth and shiny in the shadow--no ripple broke its surface.

It was like a grey satin ribbon between the dusky green silk of the meadows that were on each side of its banks.
"It's all right," said Peter, "but somehow I can always see how pretty things are much better when I've something to do.

Let's get down on to the towpath and fish from there." Phyllis and Bobbie remembered how the boys on the canal-boats had thrown coal at them, and they said so.
"Oh, nonsense," said Peter.

"There aren't any boys here now.

If there were, I'd fight them." Peter's sisters were kind enough not to remind him how he had NOT fought the boys when coal had last been thrown.