“What are the wickedest flowers you know?” asked Austin.

“Well, Sir, I should say them as had most thorns,” said Lubin feelingly.

“I wonder,” mused Austin.  Then he relapsed into his meditations.  “How thick with life the air is.  I’m sure it’s populated, if we only had eyes to see.  I feel it throbbing all round me—­full of beings as much alive as I am, only invisible.  People used to see them once upon a time—­why can’t we now?  Naiads, and dryads, and fauns, and the great god Pan everywhere; oh, to think we may be actually surrounded by these wonders of beauty, and yet unable to talk to any of them!  Nothing but wicked old women, and horrible young men in plaid knickerbockers and bowler hats, who worry one about odds and handicaps.  It’s all very sad and ugly.”

“Aren’t you rather hot, standing there in the sun, Sir, all this time?” said Lubin, looking up.

“Very hot,” replied Austin.  “I wonder what time it is?”

Lubin glanced up at the sundial.  “Just five minutes past the hour, or thereabouts, I make it.”

“Oh, Lubin, let’s go and bathe!” cried Austin suddenly.  “You must be far hotter than I am.  There’s plenty of time—­we don’t lunch till half-past one.  How long would it take us to get to the bathing-pool just at the bend of the river?”

“Well—­not above ten minutes, I should say,” was Lubin’s answer.  “I’d like a dip myself more’n a little, but I’m not quite sure if I ought to—­you see the mistress wants all this finished up by the afternoon, and then——­”

“But you must!” insisted Austin.  “You forget that I’ve only got one leg, so I can’t swim as I used, and you’ve got to come and take care I don’t get drowned.  ‘O weep for Adonais—­he is dead!’ How angry Aunt Charlotte would be.  And then she’d cry, poor dear, and go into hideous mourning for her poor Austin.  Come along, Lubin—­but wait, I must just go and get a couple of towels.  Oh, I’m simply mad for the water.  I’ll be back in less than a flash.”

Lubin drove his spade into the earth, turned down his sleeves, and rested—­a fair-skinned, bronzed, wholesome object, good to look at—­while Austin stumped away.  In less than five minutes the two youths started off together, tramping through the long, lush meadow-grass which lay between the end of the garden and the river.  The sun burned fiercely overhead, and the air quivered in the heat.

“Isn’t it wonderful!” cried Austin, when they reached the edge of the water, and were standing under the shade of some trees that overhung the towing-path.  “Come, Lubin, strip—­I’m half undressed already.  Look at the white and purple lights in the water—­aren’t they marvellous?  Now we’re going right down into them.  Oh the freedom of air, and colour, and body—­how I do hate clothes!  I say, how funny my stump looks, doesn’t it?  Just like a great white rolling-pin.  You must go in first, Lubin, and then you’ll be prepared to catch me when I begin drowning.”