It really was a most astonishing trout. The more we looked at it, the
more we marvelled at it.
It excited George so much that he climbed up on the back of a chair to
get a better view of it.
And then the chair slipped, and George clutched wildly at the trout-case
to save himself, and down it came with a crash, George and the chair on
top of it.
"You haven't injured the fish, have you?" I cried in alarm, rushing up.
"I hope not," said George, rising cautiously and looking about.
But he had. That trout lay shattered into a thousand fragments - I say a
thousand, but they may have only been nine hundred. I did not count
them.
We thought it strange and unaccountable that a stuffed trout should break
up into little pieces like that.
And so it would have been strange and unaccountable, if it had been a
stuffed trout, but it was not.
That trout was plaster-of-Paris.
CHAPTER XVIII.
LOCKS. - GEORGE AND I ARE PHOTOGRAPHED. - WALLINGFORD. - DORCHESTER. -
ABINGDON. - A FAMILY MAN. - A GOOD SPOT FOR DROWNING. - A DIFFICULT BIT
OF WATER. - DEMORALIZING EFFECT OF RIVER AIR.
WE left Streatley early the next morning, and pulled up to Culham, and
slept under the canvas, in the backwater there.
