At the mouth of the Gap was a familiar post.

She slipped Ragamuffin’s rein over it, and ran down the steep, uneven way through the chalk cliff, her bob-tail baying at her side.

Right athwart the Gap, peering into it, shining-eyed and splendid, lay the sea, calling her.

“I’m coming!” her heart answered with a thrill, and she swooped toward it with a whoop and widespread arms.

Her feet crashed into the jolly shouting shingle, and she ploughed her way through it, to the rocks under the cliff which made her bathing tent.

The tide was brimming and beautiful.  It came welling up, curled and fell with a soft, delicious swish on the answering beach.

Calm and full, twinkling still through faint mists, its shining surface was ruffled faintly by a light-footed breeze.

Swift as a bird the girl, blue-clad now, came rushing out from her hiding-place, her fair hair bunched in a cap, the sea in her nostrils, and exaltation in her heart.

This surely was heaven!

A moment she hovered on the brink, testing the waters with a tentative foot.

Then with a sigh of content she trusted herself to the deep.  It closed about her like the arms of a friend.

She had not bathed since November, and it seemed to her the ocean welcomed her, clinging to her, lifting her, loving her, holding her close.

She buried her face in it, rose dripping, shaking the water off her eyes and face and hair, and swam out to sea with long and steady strokes.

She did not shout, she did not splash, she did not play the fool, and did not want to; rejoicing deeply in the quiet of her great friend, heart to heart and flesh to flesh, while the waters made music all about her.

The first bath was for her a kind of sacrament.  She drew from it the deep and tranquil exaltation that she supposed Elsie Haggard drew from Communion.

Fifty yards out to sea she turned and trod water.

Billy Bluff, the old ass, was fussing about on the edge of the tide, barking at her.

“William!” called the head on the water.  “Come on!”

Billy fiddled and flirted and could not bring himself to make the plunge.

Boy watched him with amused resentment.  It was his domesticity which was his undoing.  Old Man Badger on the hillside would never have dillied or dallied like that.

“Come on!” she ordered deeply.  “Or I’ll come and lug you in.”

Billy marked the imperious note in his young mistress’s voice.  He ran this way and that, excused himself, pranced, whined, whimpered, yapped, barked, tasted the water and didn’t like it, tried a dip, and withdrew, and finally made the effort and shoved off.

He swam rather low.  His long, black back lay along the shining surface, his hair floating like seaweed on either side of him, while he left a little eddying wake behind him, as he pushed swiftly toward the girl.