She was excited; she stretched out both bare arms as though preparing to demonstrate her ability then and there.
“I should like to see a circus,” she said. “Then I should know what to do. That I can swing higher than any girl in Paradise has been demonstrated often,” she went on, earnestly. “I can swim farther, I can dive deeper, I can run faster, with bare feet or with sabots, than anybody, man or woman, from the Beacon to Our Lady’s Chapel! At bowls the men will not allow me because I have beaten them all, monsieur, even the mayor, which he never forgave. As for the farandole, I tire last of all—and it is the biniou who cries out for mercy!” 192
She laughed and pushed back her hair, standing straight up in the yellow radiance like a moor-sprite. There was something almost unearthly in her lithe young body and fearless sea-blue eyes, sparkling from the shock of curls.
“So you can dive and swim?” asked Speed, with a glance at me.
“Like the salmon in the Läita, monsieur.”
“Under water?”
“Parbleu!”
After a pause I asked her age.
“Fifteen, M’sieu Scarlett.”
“You don’t look thirteen, Jacqueline.”