“Come, mother.  I’ll race you out.”

Mrs. Hilary waded in, a figure not without grace and dignity.  Looking back they saw Rosalind coming down the beach, large-limbed and splendid, like Juno.  Mrs. Hilary shrugged her shoulders.

“Disgusting,” she remarked to Neville.

So much more, she meant, of Rosalind than of Rosalind’s costume.  Mrs. Hilary preferred it to be the other way about, for, though she did not really like either of them, she disliked the costume less than she disliked Rosalind.

“It’s quite in the fashion,” Neville assured her, and Mrs. Hilary, remarking that she was sure of that, splashed her head and face and pushed off, mainly to escape from Rosalind, who always sat in the foam, not being, like the Hilary family, an active swimmer.

Already Pamela and Gilbert were far out, swimming steadily against each other, and Nan was tumbling and turning like an eel close behind them.

Neville and Mrs. Hilary swam out a little way.

“I shall now float on my back,” said Mrs. Hilary.  “You swim on and catch up with the rest.”

“You’ll be all right?” Neville asked, lingering.

“Why shouldn’t I be all right?  I bathe nearly every day, you know, even if I am sixty-three.”  This was not accurate; she only bathed as a rule when it was warm, and this seldom occurs on our island coasts.

Neville, saying, “Don’t stop in long, will you,” left her and swam out into the blue with her swift, over-hand stroke.  Neville was the best swimmer in a swimming family.  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 and won, and then they began to duck each other.  When the Hilary brothers and sisters were swimming or playing together, they were even as they had been twenty years ago.

Mrs. Hilary watched them, swimming slowly round, a few feet out of her depth.  They seemed to have forgotten her and her birthday.  The only one who was within speaking distance was Rosalind, wallowing with her big white limbs in tumbling waves on the shore; Rosalind, whom she disliked; Rosalind, who was more than her costume, which was not saying much; Rosalind, before whom she had to keep up an appearance of immense enjoyment because Rosalind was so malicious.

“You wonderful woman!  I can’t think how you do it,” Rosalind was crying to her in her rich, ripe voice out of the splashing waves.  “But fancy their all swimming out and leaving you to yourself.  Why, you might get cramp and sink. I’m no use, you know; I’m hopeless; can’t keep up at all.”

“I shan’t trouble you, thank you,” Mrs. Hilary called back, and her voice shook a little because she was getting chilled.

“Why, you’re shivering,” Rosalind cried.  “Why don’t you come out?  You are wonderful, I do admire you....  It’s no use waiting for the others, they’ll be ages....  I say, look at Neville; fancy her being forty-three.  I never knew such a family....  Come and sit in the waves with me, it’s lovely and warm.”