ks, bending over the pools,
as if they were looking for crabs.

Nan went to bed. When Gerda came in presently, she lay very still and
pretended to be asleep.

It was dreadful, another night of sharing a bed. Dreadful to lie so
close one to the other; dreadful to touch accidentally; touching people
reminded you how alive they are, with their separate, conscious throbbing
life so close against yours.

2

Next morning they took the road eastward. They were going to ride along
the coast to Talland Bay, where they were going to spend a week. They
were giving themselves a week to get there, which would allow plenty of
time for bathing by the way. It is no use hurrying in Cornwall, the hills
are too steep and the sea too attractive, and lunch and tea, when ordered
in shops, so long in coming. The first day they only got round the Lizard
to Cadgwith, where they dived from steep rocks into deep blue water. Nan
dived from a high rock with a swoop like a sea bird's, a pretty thing to
watch. Barry was nearly as good; he too was physically proficient. The
Bendishes were less competent; they were so much younger, as Barry said.
But they too reached the water head first, which is, after all, the main
thing in diving. And as often as Nan dived, with her arrowy swoop, Gerda
tumbled in too, from the same rock, and when Nan climbed a yet higher
rock and dived again, Gerda climbed too, and fell in sprawling after her.
Gerda to-day was not to be outdone, anyhow in will to attempt, whatever
her achievement might lack. Nan looked up from the sea with a kind of
mocking admiration at the little figure poised on the high shelf of rock,
slightly unsteady about the knees, slightly blue about the lips, thin
white arms pointing forward for the plunge.

The child had pluck.... It must have hurt, too, that slap on the nearly
flat body as she struck the sea. She hadn't done it well. She came up
with a dazed look, shaking the water out of her eyes, coughing.

"You're too ambitious," Barry told her. "That was much too high for you.
You're also blue with cold. Come out."

Gerda looked up at Nan, who was scrambling nimbly onto the highest ledge
of all, crying "I must have one more."

Barry said to Gerda "No, you're not going after her. You're coming out.
It's no use thinking you can do all Nan does. None of us can."

Gerda gave up. The pace was too hard for her. She couldn't face that
highest rock; the one below had made her feel cold and queer