Mrs. Hilary watched them, swimming slowly round, a few feet out of her depth. They seemed to have forgotten her and her birthday. The only one who was within speaking distance was Rosalind, wallowing with her big white limbs in tumbling waves on the shore; Rosalind, whom she disliked; Rosalind, who was more than her costume, which was not saying much; Rosalind, before whom she had to keep up an appearance of immense enjoyment because Rosalind was so malicious.
"You wonderful woman! I can't think how you do it," Rosalind was crying to her in her rich, ripe voice out of the splashing waves. "But fancy their all swimming out and leaving you to yourself. Why, you might get cramp and sink. I'm no use, you know; I'm hopeless; can't keep up at all."
"I shan't trouble you, thank you," Mrs. Hilary called back, and her voice shook a little because she was getting chilled.
"Why, you're shivering," Rosalind cried. "Why don't you come out? You are wonderful, I do admire you.... It's no use waiting for the others, they'll be ages.... I say, look at Neville; fancy her being forty-three. I never knew such a family.... Come and sit in the waves with me, it's lovely and warm."
"I prefer swimming," said Mrs. Hilary, and she was shivering more now. She never stayed in so long as this; she usually only plunged in and came out.
Grandmama, stopping on the esplanade in her donkey chair, was waving and beckoning to her. Grandmama knew she had been in too long, and that her rheumatism would be bad.
"Come out, dear," Grandmama called, in her old thin voice. "Come out. You've been in far too long."
Mrs. Hilary only waved her hand to Grandmama. She was not going to come out, like an old woman, before the others did, the others, who had swum out and left her alone on her birthday bathe.
They were swimming back now, first all in a row, then one behind the other; Neville leading, with her arrowy drive, Gilbert and Pamela behind, so alike, with their pale, finely cut, intellectual faces, and their sharp chins cutting through the sea, and their quick, short, vigorous strokes, and Nan, still far out, swimming lazily on her back, the sun in her eyes.
Mrs. Hilary's heart stirred to see her swimming brood, so graceful and strong and swift and young. They possessed, surely, everything that was in the heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water over the earth. And she, who was sixty-three, possessed nothing. She could not even swim with her children. They might have thought of that, and stayed with her.... Neville, anyhow. Jim would have, said Mrs. Hilary to herself, half knowing and half not knowing that she was lying.