Ashurst contemplated his visage in a looking-glass.  After his farmhouse bedroom, the comb and one spare shirt regime of the last fortnight, this room littered with clothes and brushes was a sort of Capua; and he thought:  ’Queer—­one doesn’t realise But what—­he did not quite know.

When he followed Halliday into the sitting room for lunch, three faces, very fair and blue-eyed, were turned suddenly at the words:  “This is Frank Ashurst my young sisters.”

Two were indeed young, about eleven and ten.  The third was perhaps seventeen, tall and fair-haired too, with pink-and-white cheeks just touched by the sun, and eyebrows, rather darker than the hair, running a little upwards from her nose to their outer points.  The voices of all three were like Halliday’s, high and cheerful; they stood up straight, shook hands with a quick movement, looked at Ashurst critically, away again at once, and began to talk of what they were going to do in the afternoon.  A regular Diana and attendant nymphs!  After the farm this crisp, slangy, eager talk, this cool, clean, off-hand refinement, was queer at first, and then so natural that what he had come from became suddenly remote.  The names of the two little ones seemed to be Sabina and Freda; of the eldest, Stella.

Presently the one called Sabina turned to him and said: 

“I say, will you come shrimping with us?—­it’s awful fun!”

Surprised by this unexpected friendliness, Ashurst murmured: 

“I’m afraid I’ve got to get back this afternoon.”

“Oh!”

“Can’t you put it off?”

Ashurst turned to the new speaker, Stella, shook his head, and smiled.  She was very pretty!  Sabina said regretfully:  “You might!” Then the talk switched off to caves and swimming.

“Can you swim far?”

“About two miles.”

“Oh!”

“I say!”

“How jolly!”

The three pairs of blue eyes, fixed on him, made him conscious of his new importance—­The sensation was agreeable.  Halliday said: 

“I say, you simply must stop and have a bathe.  You’d better stay the night.”

“Yes, do!"’

But again Ashurst smiled and shook his head.  Then suddenly he found himself being catechised about his physical achievements.  He had rowed—­it seemed—­in his college boat, played in his college football team, won his college mile; and he rose from table a sort of hero.  The two little girls insisted that he must see “their” cave, and they set forth chattering like magpies, Ashurst between them, Stella and her brother a little behind.  In the cave, damp and darkish like any other cave, the great feature was a pool with possibility of creatures which might be caught and put into bottles.  Sabina and Freda, who wore no stockings on their shapely brown legs, exhorted Ashurst to join them in the middle of it, and help sieve the water.  He too was soon bootless and sockless.  Time goes