Our Mutual Friend - Part 1

In these times of ours, though concerning the exact year there is no need to be precise, a boat of dirty and disreputable ap-pearance, with two figures in it, floated on the Thames, between Southwark bridge which is of iron, and London Bridge which is of stone, as an autumn evening was closing in. The figures in this boat were those of a strong man with ragged grizzled hair and a sun-browned face, and a dark girl of nineteen or twenty, sufficiently like him to be recognizable as his daughter. The girl rowed, pulling a pair of sculls very eas-ily the man, with the rudder-lines slack in his hands, and his hands loose in his waistband, kept an eager look out. He had no net, hook, or line, and he could not be a fisherman his boat had no cushion for a sitter, no paint, no inscription, no appli-ance beyond a rusty boathook and a coil of rope, and he could not be a waterman his boat was too crazy and too small to take in cargo for delivery, and he could not be a lighterman or river-carrier there was no clue to what he looked for, but he looked for something, with a most intent and searching gaze.