able ripple and throb under the skin? He couldn't have described
it to himself.

So he gave Jujubes his invariable casual answer. You did it because it
kept you fit and because (he let old Eno have it) it kept you decent.
Old Eno would be a lot decenter if he went in for it. It would do him
worlds of good.

To which old Eno replied that he thought he saw himself! As for joining
Ranny's precious old Poly., why, for all the Life you were likely to see
there, you might as well be in a young ladies' boarding-school. And
Ransome said that that was where Jujubes ought to be. He liked young
ladies. Among them (he intimated) his flabbiness might not excite
remark. Girls (he pondered it) were flabby things.

Chivalry constrained him to a mental reservation: Winny Dymond and the
young ladies of the Poly. Gym. excepted.

But he was glad that Mercier didn't stay to see them. Young Leonard
(whose smile was growing more and more atrocious) had declared that the
young ladies of the Empire ballet were a bit more in his line, and he
had made off, elbowing his way through the crowded gallery and crooning
"Boys of the Empire!" as he went, while Ransome pursued him with the
scornful adjuration to "Go home and take a saline draught!"

But you couldn't shame old Eno. He triumphed and exulted in his
flabbiness. For he was a Boy of the Empire. He had seen Life, and would
see more and more of it.

* * * * *

Ransome went down again into the hall. He removed himself from the crowd
and leaned against a pillar, in abstraction, arms folded, showing the
great muscles; a splendid figure in his white "zephyr" trimmed with
crimson, with the crimson sash of leadership knotted at his side. Thus
withdrawn, he watched, half furtively, the performance of the young
ladies of the Polytechnic Gymnasium.

One by one, with an air incorruptibly decorous, the young ladies of the
Polytechnic Gymnasium hurled themselves upon the parallel bars; they
waggled themselves by their hands along them; they swung themselves from
side to side of them, and outstretched themselves between them with a
foot and a hand upon each bar; they raised their bodies, thus supported,
like an arch; they slackened them and flung themselves (with a crescendo
of decorous delirium) from side to side again, and over; alighting on
their feet in a curtseying posture and with the left arm extended in a
little perfunctory gesture of demonstration to the audien