CHAPTER VI 

 BREYDON IN LEISURELY AUTUMN 



ON HOUSEBOATS 



WITH the advent of August summer may be said 

 to have rounded the corner ; the days may be 

 warmer, but there is a perceptible shortening 

 of the daylight, while an appearance of ripeness creeps over 

 the face of nature. One feels, perhaps, more leisurely in 

 August than in any other month of the year, for there come 

 the welcome holidays, with a sense of restfulness and relax- 

 ation. Far and wide scatter the holiday-making crowds, and 

 I, now that my summer holidays have come, make for 

 Breydon. It is not every one who could remain for a month 

 content with so muddy and level and solitary a holiday 

 resort, but all tastes are not alike ; and having spent the 

 summer in the slums of a big seaport town, one can well 

 appreciate a spell of rough-and-tumble life, free and unre- 

 strained, getting up when one chooses, doing just what one 

 fancies, and leading the simple life, free of life's nastinesses, 

 of neighbours, newspapers, and noises. 



Much of our pleasure in life is anticipatory ; the prepara- 

 tions for a holiday are cheerfully undertaken, and are a kind 

 of forestallment of its enjoyments. And who can gauge the 

 pleasures enjoyed by a boating man who scrapes and paints 

 and rigs and overhauls his stores before he goes afloat ? But 

 long before August comes the old Moorhen has put on her 

 annual rig-out ; cushions, blankets, and household gear and 

 sundries have been reinstalled, and nights not a few have 

 already been spent therein. There has, however, been the 

 inevitable rush back in the early morning. 



The Moorhen lies near Banham's farm, two good miles 

 from the town, shored up, like a hull still on the stocks, on 

 a little rond boarded round by timbers, to arrest the constant 



148 



