Joan, Mrs. Moxton perceived that afternoon, had a swift and angry fight with her summer wardrobe. Both the pink gingham and the white drill had been tried on and flung aside, and she had decided at last upon a rather jolly warm blue figured voile with a belt of cherry-coloured ribbon that suited her brown skin and black hair better than those weaker supports. She had evidently opened every drawer in her room in a hasty search for white silk stockings.

When she came out into the sunshine of the garden Peter’s eyes told her she had guessed the right costume.

Oswald was standing up on his crutches and smiling, and Peter was throwing up a racquet and catching it again with one hand.

“Thank God for a left-handed childhood!” said Peter. “I’m going to smash you, Joan.”

528“I forgot about that,” said Joan. “But you aren’t going to smash me, old Petah.”

When tea-time came they were still fighting the seventh vantage game, and Joan was up.

They came and sat at the tea-table, and Joan as she poured the tea reflected that a young man in white flannels, flushed and a little out of breath, with his white silk shirt wide open at the neck, was a more beautiful thing than the most beautiful woman alive. And her dark eyes looked at the careless and exhausted Peter, that urgent and insoluble problem, while she counted, “Twenty-four, thirty-six, forty-one—about forty-one hours. How the devil shall I do it?”

It wasn’t to be done at tennis anyhow, and she lost the next three games running without apparent effort, and took Peter by the arm and walked him about the garden, discoursing on flying. “I must teach you to fly,” said Peter. “Often when I’ve been up alone I’ve thought, ’Some day I’ll teach old Joan.’”

“That’s a promise, Petah.”

“Sure,” said Peter, who had not suffered next to two Americans for nothing.

“I’ve got it in writing,” said Joan.

“I’d rather learn from you than any one,” said she.

Peter discoursed of stunts....

They spent a long golden time revisiting odd corners in which they had played together. They went down the village and up to the church and round the edge of the wood, and there they came upon and devoured a lot of blackberries, and then they went down to the mill pond and sat for a time in Baker’s boat. Then they got at cross purposes about dressing for dinner. Joan wanted to dress very much. She wanted to remind Peter t............