“I know it is,” he said. “You yawned jolly well.”
Frank picked up a handful of the dry powdery sand and let it trickle gently into the gap of shin that showed between the end of David’s trousers, and the beginning of his sock. This caused him to spring up.
“Lord, what’s that?” he said. “Oh, I see. Funny; I thought it was a bug of sorts.”
“Well, if you will grow so that your trousers only reach half-way down your legs, what else is to be done with the intervals?” asked Frank.
“I grew two inches last half,” said David. “I shall be taller than you before I’ve done.”
“Very likely. You will be the image of a piece of asparagus, if you like that. And certainly, if you grow up to the size of your feet, you’ll be big enough. I shall call you Spondee.”
David’s shirt was half over his head, but he paused and spoke muffled.
David gave a great splutter of laughter, as his shirt came off.
“Oh, quite funny,” he said. “Wish I had guessed. Jove, doesn’t the sea look good? I’m glad it was made, and—and that I didn’t die in the night. You didn’t bring down anything to eat, did you? Isn’t it bad to bathe on an empty tummy? Or is it a full one?”
“Don’t know. I’m going to bathe on my own, anyhow. David, there’s a sharp line round your neck, where your clothes begin, when you’ve got any, as if you’d painted your neck with the sprain-stuff, Iodine.”
“I did,” said David fatuously, standing nude. “Come on; the ripping old sea’s waiting for us.”
The tide was high and the beach steep, so that a few steps across the belt of sand all a-tremble in the heat, and a few strokes into the cool, tingling water, were sufficient to snatch them away from all solid things, and give them the buoyancy of liquid existences. The sea slept in the windlessness of this August weather, and, as if with long-taken breaths, a silence and alternate whisper of ripple broke along its rims. Far out a fleet of herring-boats with drooping sails hovered like grey-winged gulls; above, an unclouded sun shone on the shining watery plains, and on the two wet heads, one black, one yellow, that moved out seawards with side-stroke flashings of white arms clawing the sea, amid a smother of foam. Farther and farther they moved out, till at last David rolled over in the water, and floated on his back.