“You do take care of me nicely,” she said, when finally he pulled her frock over her knees and smoothed out the wrinkles from her cream-coloured coat. “Bob never used to stop for a minute. He was always doing up his tackle or washing his fish or something. And if I did ask him to stop he thought I wanted him to mess me about⁠—you know?⁠—when it was only, like now, that I just couldn’t get my boots on! They get so stiff and funny when you take them off. I never understand why.”

But Wolf’s mind was in no mood to deal with the abstract problem of damp leather. He was wondering in his heart whether Gerda’s mania for water-rats had anything to do with the close resemblance between Mr. Weevil and these harmless rodents.

“What we’ve got to think about now,” he said, “is the shortest way to Blacksod.”