Eustace’s eyes sparkled, then he looked anxious. ‘Do you think they’ll have a white horse on their hats?’ Mr. Cherrington laughed. ‘I’m afraid I couldn’t tell you that.’ Eustace shook his head, and said earnestly:

‘I hope they won’t try to copy us too much. Boys and girls should be kept separate, shouldn’t they?’ He thought for a moment and his brow cleared. ‘Of course, there was Lady Godiva.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t see the connection,’ said his father.

‘Well, she rode on a white horse.’ Eustace didn’t like being called on to explain what he meant. ‘But only with nothing on.’ He paused. ‘Hilda will have to get some new clothes now, won’t she? She’ll have to have them tried on.’ His eye brightened; he liked to see Hilda freshly adorned.

‘Yes, and there’s no time to lose. I’ve spoken to your aunt, Eustace, and she agrees with me that you’re the right person to break the news to Hilda. We think it’ll come better from you. Companions in adversity and all that, you know.’

Eustace’s mouth fell open.

‘Oh, Daddy, I couldn’t. She’d—I don’t know what she might not do. She’s so funny with me now, anyway. She might almost go off her rocker.’

‘Not if you approach her tactfully.’

‘Well, I’ll try,’ said Eustace. ‘Perhaps the day after to-morrow.’

‘No, tell her this afternoon.’

‘Fains I, Daddy. Couldn’t you? It is your afternoon off.’

‘Yes, and I want a little peace. Listen, isn’t that Hilda coming in? Now run away and get your jumping-poles and go down on the beach.’

They heard the front door open and shut; it wasn’t quite a slam but near enough to show that Hilda was in the state of mind in which things slipped easily from her fingers.

Each with grave news to tell the other, and neither knowing how, they started for the beach. Eustace’s jumping-pole was a stout rod of bamboo, prettily ringed and patterned with spots like a leopard. By stretching his hand up he could nearly reach the top; he might have been a bear trying to climb up a ragged staff. As they walked across the green that sloped down to the cliff he planted the pole in front of him and took practice leaps over any obstacle that showed itself—a brick it might be, or a bit of fencing, or the cart-track which ran just below the square. Hilda’s jumping-pole was made of wood, and much longer than Eustace’s; near to the end it tapered slightly and then swelled out again, like a broom-handle. It was the kind of pole used by real pole-jumpers at athletic events, and she did not play about with it but saved her energy for when it should be needed. The January sun still spread a pearly radiance round them; it hung over the sea, quite low down, and was already beginning to cast fiery reflections on the water. The day was not cold for January, and Eustace was well wrapped up, but his bare knees felt the chill rising from the ground, and he said to Hilda:

‘Of course, trousers would be much warmer.’

She made no answer but quickened her pace so that Eustace had to run between his jumps. He had never known her so preoccupied before.

In silence they reached the edge of the cliff and the spiked railing at the head of the concrete staircase. A glance showed them the sea was coming in. It had that purposeful look and the sands were dry in front of it. A line of foam, like a border of white braid, was curling round the outermost rocks.

Except for an occasional crunch their black beach shoes made no sound on the sand-strewn steps. Eustace let his pole slide from one to the other, pleased with the rhythmic tapping.

‘Oh, don’t do that, Eustace. You have no pity on my poor nerves.’

‘I’m so sorry, Hilda.’

But a moment later, changing her mind as visibly as if she were passing an apple from one hand to the other, she said, ‘You can, if you like. I don’t really mind.’

Obediently Eustace resumed his tapping but it now gave him the feeling of something done under sufferance and was not so much fun. He was quite glad when they came to the bottom of the steps and the tapping stopped.

Here, under the cliff, the sand was pale and fine and powdery; it lay in craters inches deep and was useless for jumping, for the pole could get no purchase on such a treacherous foundation; it turned in mid air and the jumper came down heavily on one side or the other. So they hurried down to the beach proper, where the sand was brown and close and firm, and were soon among the smooth, seaweed-coated rocks which bestrewed the shore like a vast colony of sleeping seals.

Eustace was rapidly and insensibly turning into a chamois or an ibex when he checked himself and remembered that, for the task that lay before him, some other pretence might be more helpful. An ibex could break the news to a sister-ibex that she was to go to boarding school in a few days’ time, but there would be nothing tactful, subtle, or imaginative in such a method of disclosure; he might almost as well tell her himself. They had reached their favourite jumping ground and he took his stand on a rock, wondering and perplexed.

‘Let’s begin with the Cliffs of Dover,’ he said. The Cliffs of Dover, so called because a sprinkling of barnacles gave it a whitish look, was a somewhat craggy boulder about six feet away. Giving a good foothold it was their traditional first hole, and not only Hilda but Eustace could clear the distance easily. When he had alighted on it, feet together, with the soft springy pressure that was so intimately satisfying, he pulled his pole out of the sand and stepped down to let Hilda do her jump. Hilda landed on the Cliffs of Dover with the negligent grace of an alighting eagle; and, as always, Eustace, who had a feeling for style, had to fight back a twinge of envy.

‘Now the Needles,’ he said. ‘You go first.’ The Needles was both more precipitous and further away, and there was only one spot on it where you could safely make a landing. Eustace occasionally muffed it, but Hilda never; what was his consternation therefore to see her swerve in mid-leap, fumble for a foothold, and slide off on to the sand.

‘Oh, hard luck, sir!’ exclaimed Eustace. The remark fell flat. He followed her in silence and made a rather heavy-footed but successful landing.

‘You’re one up,’ said Hilda. They scored as in golf over a course of eighteen jumps, and when Hilda had won usually played the bye before beginning another round on a different set of rocks. Thus, the miniature but exciting landscape of mountain, plain and lake (for many of the rocks stood in deep pools, starfish-haunted), was continually changing.

Eustace won the first round at the nineteenth rock. He could hardly believe it. Only once before had he beaten Hilda, and that occasion was so long ago that all he could remember of it was the faint, sweet feeling of triumph. In dreams, on the other hand, he was quite frequently victorious. The experience then was poignantly delightful, utterly beyond anything obtainable in daily life. But he got a whiff of it now. Muffled to a dull suggestion of itself, like some dainty eaten with a heavy cold, it was still the divine elixir.

Hilda did not seem to realize how momentous her defeat was, nor, happily, did she seem to mind. Could she have lost on purpose? Eustace wondered. She was thoughtful and abstracted. Eustace simply had to say something.

‘Your sandshoes are very worn, Hilda,’ he said. ‘They slipped every time. You must get another pair.’

She gave him a rather sad smile, and he added tentatively:

‘I expect the ibex sheds its hoofs like its antlers. You’re just going through one of those times.’

Oh, so that’s what we’re playing,’ said Hilda, but there was a touch of languor in her manner, as well as scorn.

‘Yes, but we can play something else,’ said Eustace. Trying to think of a new pretence, he began to make scratches with his pole on the smooth sand. The words ‘St. Ninian’s’ started to take shape. Quickly he obliterated them with his foot, but they had given him an idea. They had given Hilda an idea, too.