16 she ate 4200
peaches, and sent the stones to the Government. In 1917 the military
authorities called up three of her gardeners, and what with this and the
fact that it was a bad year for wall fruit, she only managed to eat 2900
peaches during that crucial period of the national destinies. In 1918
she did rather better, for between January 1st and the date of the
Armistice she ate 3300 peaches. Since the Armistice she had relaxed her
efforts; now she did not eat more than two or three peaches a day. Her
constitution, she complained, had suffered; but it had suffered for a
good cause.

Denis answered her greeting by a vague and polite noise.

"So nice to see the young people enjoying themselves," Mrs. Budge went
on. "And the old people too, for that matter. Look at old Lord Moleyn
and dear Mr. Callamay. Isn't it delightful to see the way they enjoy
themselves?"

Denis looked. He wasn't sure whether it was so very delightful after
all. Why didn't they go and watch the sack races? The two old gentlemen
were engaged at the moment in congratulating the winner of the race; it
seemed an act of supererogatory graciousness; for, after all, she had
only won a heat.

"Pretty little thing, isn't she?" said Mrs. Budge huskily, and panted
two or three times.

"Yes," Denis nodded agreement. Sixteen, slender, but nubile, he said to
himself, and laid up the phrase in his memory as a happy one. Old Mr.
Callamay had put on his spectacles to congratulate the victor, and Lord
Moleyn, leaning forward over his walking-stick, showed his long ivory
teeth, hungrily smiling.

"Capital performance, capital," Mr. Callamay was saying in his deep
voice.

The victor wriggled with embarrassment. She stood with her hands behind
her back, rubbing one foot nervously on the other. Her wet bathing-dress
shone, a torso of black polished marble.

"Very good indeed," said Lord Moleyn. His voice seemed to come from just
behind his teeth, a toothy voice. It was as though a dog should suddenly
begin to speak. He smiled again, Mr. Callamay readjusted his spectacles.

"When I say 'Go,' go. Go!"

Splash! The third heat had started.

"Do you know, I never could learn to swim," said Mrs. Budge.

"Really?"

"But I used to be able to float."

Denis imagined her floating--up and down, up and down on a great green
swell. A blown black bladder; no, that wasn't good, that wasn't good at
all. A new winner was being congratulated. She was atrociously stub