"Jump in, Gwenna. I'll row you across the lake."
The girl skipped round the clump of rhodos that hid the last flicker of her skirt; and the boy bent to the short, home-made sculls.
The boat was a crank, unhandy little craft; and lacked thole-pins on one side. Therefore Gwenna, swift-footed Little Thing that she was, had as good a chance of winning as he.
"Like trying to row a bucket!" he laughed, as the boat spun. "Hi, Gwen! I ought to have some start, you know!"
He rowed. Presently he rested on his oars and called, "Hullo, have you started?"
"Started--" came back only the echo from the cottage roof. There was no sign of any grey-frocked running figure on the bank. He scanned it on both sides of him, gave a look towards each of those shrub-covered islands on the smooth expanse.
"Gwenna--Why, where are you? What's become of the girl," he muttered. "Gwen-na!"
"Hul-lo!" he shouted. The echo answered as he sat in the boat staring about him....
Then he felt a twitch at one of his sculls. It turned in his hand; was wrenched from him.
"What the deuce----" he began, surprised.
It was nothing on earth that had greeted him. It was something of the water that laughed up into his face and called, "Hullo, husband!"
A mermaid, a water-nymph, a little white-shouldered Undine was peeping up and mocking him! She trod water, turned over on her side, swam with easy strokes.
For always Gwenna had been proud of her swimming.
She had won a medal for it at that Aberystwith school of hers; but she wanted more than a mere medal for it now. She wanted her boy to see her swimming, and to praise her stroke. She had looked forward to that. She wanted to show him that she could make as graceful movements with her own body in the water as he could make with his biplane in the air. She could! He should see! She made these movements. She had thought of making them--just _so_--on the morning of her marriage. Only then she had thought it would be in the sea off Brighton beach, with whole crowds of other stupid people about in dark-blue or Turkey-red "costumes." Here it was so much lovelier; a whole mountain-side and a clear lake to herself in which to show off her pet accomplishment to her lover. She was one innocent and pretty Vanity incarnate as she glided along beside his boat. She gave a quick twist. There was a commotion of translucent amber water, a gleam of coral white that shaded down into peaty brown as she dived, reappearing on the other side of the boat, looking up at him, blinking as her curls streamed water into her eyes.