Dangerous Ages

Neville suggested to

eed except Grandmama, who was going out in her d

y still sang of the Red Sea, and where the blu

as other bathers were doing all round the bay. When Mrs. Hilary came out of her tent, Neville was wa

er. I'll ra

ooking back they saw Rosalind coming down the beach, large-limb

" she remark

y preferred it to be the other way about, for, though she did not really li

was sure of that, splashed her head and face and pushed off, mainly to escape from Ros

ng steadily against each other, and Nan was tum

. Hilary swam o

" said Mrs. Hilary. "You swim

ight?" Neville a

ven if I am sixty-three." This was not accurate; she only bathed as

She clove the water like a torpedo destroyer, swift and untiring between the hot summer sun and the cool summer sea. She shouted to the others, caught them up, raced them

hin speaking distance was Rosalind, wallowing with her big white limbs in tumbling waves on the shore; Rosalind, whom she disliked; Rosalind, who was more

e voice out of the splashing waves. "But fancy their all swimming out and leaving you to yourse

Hilary called back, and her voice shook

.... It's no use waiting for the others, they'll be ages.... I say, look at Neville; fancy her being

s shivering more now. She never stayed in so long

, was waving and beckoning to her. Grandmama knew she ha

d, in her old thin voice. "Come o

to come out, like an old woman, before the others did, the oth

rt and Pamela behind, so alike, with their pale, finely cut, intellectual faces, and their sharp chins cutting through th

e or on the earth beneath or in the water over the earth. And she, who was sixty-three, possessed nothing. She could not even swim with her children. They might

d Grandmama from the es

afar her mother's blue face, called "Mother dear, ho

" Mrs. Hilary s

hy, d

r fun," Mrs. Hilary added, having failed after try

day, when Kay and Gerda had gone off to some avocation of their own and left her in the garden. Many things she

odite, grandly beautiful, though all th

ore-coming family. "Anyone would think you w

about age, emphasizing it, a

to shore on a swelling wave and lying full length where it flung