He was rowing hard and singing, with a handkerchief tied round his head to keep his hat on, and she was laughing at him, while trying to hold up an umbrella with one hand and steer with the other.
There are but two explanations to account for people being jolly on the river in the rain.

The one I dismissed as being both uncharitable and improbable.

The other was creditable to the human race, and, adopting it, I took off my cap to this damp but cheerful pair as they went by.
They answered with a wave of the hand, and I stood looking after them till they disappeared in the mist.
I am inclined to think that those young people, if they be still alive, are happy.

Maybe, fortune has been kind to them, or maybe she has not, but in either event they are, I am inclined to think, happier than are most people.
Now and again, the daily tornado would rage with such fury as to defeat its own purpose by prematurely exhausting itself.

On these rare occasions we would sit out on the deck, and enjoy the unwonted luxury of fresh air.
I remember well those few pleasant evenings: the river, luminous with the drowned light, the dark banks where the night lurked, the storm-tossed sky, jewelled here and there with stars.
It was delightful not to hear for an hour or so the sullen thrashing of the rain; but to listen to the leaping of the fishes, the soft swirl raised by some water-rat, swimming stealthily among the rushes, the restless twitterings of the few still wakeful birds.
An old corncrake lived near to us, and the way he used to disturb all the other birds, and keep them from going to sleep, was shameful.