went with him.

This left four of us--Oswald, Alice, Dicky, and Noel.

We went on down the towing-path.

The lock shuts up (that sounds as if it was like the lock on a door, but it is very otherwise) between one pen of the river and the next; the pen where the anglers were was full right up over the roots of the grass and flowers.

But the pen below was nearly empty.
'You can see the poor river's bones,' Noel said.
And so you could.
Stones and mud and dried branches, and here and there an old kettle or a tin pail with no bottom to it, that some bargee had chucked in.
From walking so much along the river we knew many of the bargees.
Bargees are the captains and crews of the big barges that are pulled up and down the river by slow horses.