I had often felt inclined to give him something myself.

I think he was, without exception, the most clumsy and stupid boy I have ever come across; and that is saying a good deal.
His mother undertook that for three-and-sixpence a week he should "make himself generally useful" to us for a couple of hours every morning.
Those were the old lady's very words, and I repeated them to Amenda when I introduced the boy to her.
"This is James, Amenda," I said; "he will come down here every morning at seven, and bring us our milk and the letters, and from then till nine he will make himself generally useful." Amenda took stock of him.
"It will be a change of occupation for him, sir, I should say, by the look of him," she remarked.
After that, whenever some more than usually stirring crash or blood-curdling bump would cause us to leap from our seats and cry: "What on earth has happened ?" Amenda would reply: "Oh, it's only James, mum, making himself generally useful." Whatever he lifted he let fall; whatever he touched he upset; whatever he came near--that was not a fixture--he knocked over; if it was a fixture, it knocked _him_ over.

This was not carelessness: it seemed to be a natural gift.

Never in his life, I am convinced, had he carried a bucketful of anything anywhere without tumbling over it before he got there.

One of his duties was to water the flowers on the roof.
Fortunately--for the flowers--Nature, that summer, stood drinks with a lavishness sufficient to satisfy the most confirmed vegetable toper: otherwise every plant on our boat would have died from drought.