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her arm. He saw now that her sun-bonnet was of the colour
of lavender, and against it her face, red and brown, was like
an apple. She greeted him with her slow, sweet smile, and
he noticed suddenly that her teeth were small and regular
and very white. He wondered why they had never caught
his attention before.
‘I was for letting you sleep on,’ she said, ‘but they would
go up and wake you. I said you didn’t really want to come.’
‘Oh, yes, I did.’
They walked down the road and then cut across the
marshes. That way it was under a mile to the sea. The wa-
ter looked cold and gray, and Philip shivered at the sight of
it; but the others tore off their clothes and ran in shouting.
Sally did everything a little slowly, and she did not come
into the water till all the rest were splashing round Philip.
Swimming was his only accomplishment; he felt at home
in the water; and soon he had them all imitating him as he
played at being a porpoise, and a drowning man, and a fat
lady afraid of wetting her hair. The bathe was uproarious,
and it was necessary for Sally to be very severe to induce
them all to come out.
‘You’re as bad as any of them,’ she said to Philip, in her
grave, maternal way, which was at once comic and touching.
‘They’re not anything like so naughty when you’re not here.’
They walked back, Sally with her bright hair stream-
ing over one shoulder and her sun-bonnet in her hand, but
when they got to the huts Mrs. Athelny had already started
for the hop-garden. Athleny, in a pair of the oldest trousers
anyone had ever worn, his jacket buttoned up to show he

Of Human Bondage