sound like it. Come on, Miss Penny. They
wouldn't enjoy it and I wouldn't enjoy it, and I never enjoyed
anything so much in my life as that last round."

So Hennie took pity on him, and they danced many times amid great
applause.

"Awfully good of you!" said Charles Svendt, as the dawn came peeping
in through the east windows and the open front door; and Mrs. Carre,
as Mistress of the Ceremonies, and a very tired one at that, bluffly
informed the company that it was time to go home.

"I've enjoyed it immensely," said Hennie Penny, and if her face was
any index to her feelings, there was no mistake about it.

XX

None of them will ever forget that great day.

Still less is any of them likely to forget the day that followed.

As dancing only ceased when the sun was about rising, before-breakfast
bathing was declared off for that day, and they arranged to meet later
on and stroll quietly down to Dixcart Bay during the morning and all
bathe together there. Charles Svendt laughingly prepared them for an
exhibition of incompetence by stating that his swimming wasn't a patch
on his dancing, but that he could get along. Miss Penny gaily gave him
points as to her own peculiar methods of swimming, which, as we know,
demanded instant and easy touch of sand or stone at any moment of the
halting progression. He confessed to a like prejudice in favour of
something solid within reach of his sinking capacity, and they agreed
to help one another.

They called for him at the hotel about eleven o'clock, and went joking
through the sunny lanes of Petit Dixcart, crossed the brook that runs
out of Hart's-Tongue Valley, and followed it by the winding path along
the side of the cliff, among the gorse and ferns, down into the bay.

They had a right merry bathe with no grave casualties. Miss Penny,
indeed, got out of her depth twice, to the extent of quite two inches,
and shrieked for help, which Charles Svendt gallantly hastened to
render; while Graeme and Margaret swam across from head to head,
watched enviously by the paddlers in shallow waters.

They went home by the climbing path up the hillside, rested on The
Quarter-deck while Charles Svendt got his breath back, and so, by the
old Dixcart hotel, and the new one nestling among its flowers and
trees, and up the Valley, to the Vicarage.

The Vicar was basking in the shade of the trees in front of the house.

"Ah-ha--Mr. and Mrs. Graeme! Good-morning! You are none the worse fo