Protection
days, when it was worth more than South Down mutton. And now every ear
of it would have been repenting in sackcloth and ashes if it had been
qualified by Nature to know how little it would fetch per bushel. But
it wasn't. And when, the day after their arrival, Rosalind and her
husband were on the beach talking of taking a walk up that way when
Sally came out, it could have heard, if it would only have stood
still, the sheep-bells on the slopes above reproaching it, and
taunting it with its usurpation and its fruitless end. Perhaps it was
because it felt ashamed that it stooped before the wind that carried
the reproachful music, and drowned it in a silvery rustle. The barley
succeeded the best. You listen to the next July barley-field you
happen on, and hear what it can do when a breeze comes with no noise
of its own.

Down below on the shingle the sun was hot, and the tide was high, and
the water was clear and green close to the shore, and jelly-fish
abounded. You could look down into the green from the last steep ridge
at high-water mark, and if you looked sharp you might see one abound.
Only you had to be on the alert to jump back if a heave of the green
transparency surged across the little pebbles that could gobble it up
before it was all over your feet--but didn't this time. Oh dear!--how
hot it was! Sally had the best of it. For the allusion to Sally's
"coming out" referred to her coming out of the water, and she was
staying in a long time.

"That child's been twenty-four minutes already," said her mother,
consulting her watch. "Just look at her out there on the horizon. What
on earth _are_ they doing?"

It _was_ a little inexplicable. At that moment Sally and her
friend--it was one Fraeulein Braun, who had learned swimming in the
baths on the Rhone at Geneva and in Paris--appeared to be nothing but
two heads, one close behind the other, moving slowly on the water.
Then the heads parted company, and apparently their owners lay on
their backs in the water, and kicked up the British Channel.

"They're saving each other's lives," said Gerry. He got up from a nice
intaglio he had made to lie in, and after shaking off a good bushel of
small pebbles a new-made beach-acquaintance of four had heaped upon
him, resorted to a double opera-glass to see them better. "The kitten
wanted me to get out of my depth for her to tow me in. But I didn't
fancy it. Besides, a sensitive British public would have been
sca