Clare, growing interested, rode a little nearer; the young men touched their foreheads to her, some of the girls dropped a curtsy; her advance caused a little ripple in the crowd. Again she felt the slight regret that she might not mingle freely and on an equal footing with them; surely they were clean, English young men, honest enough if a trifle crude, and the girls were healthy and fresh in their muslins; but she was too simply a child to dream of disobeying Martha’s mandate. She sat her pony at her distance, looking on. The first event was a bout of wrestling; not perhaps, a very scientific exhibition, but the rivals went at it with a will, good-tempered and full of zest, staggering about the platform, their fine, young-men’s bodies knotted together like a piece of ever-changing sculpture in a natural setting, not cooped into the dinginess of a studio or a gallery. Clare saw the shock heads imprisoned under an arm, or going to butt lowered like young rams; she could hear the deep breathing, and the muffled shock as limbs and torsos closed anew together. And the audience of girls cried out and applauded, or uttered little screams when a fall seemed imminent; but the wrestlers themselves were silent, save for their heavy breathing; and the feminine cries and rustlings of admiration or dismay formed the natural accompaniment to the masculine concentration. The wrestling over, the wrestlers descended to mix in with the girls, and the competition was eager and frank among the girls to get possession of one of these heroes and to keep him by her side for the rest of the afternoon. Only Annabel Blagdon, the belle, remained unexcited and scornful; she affected to despise the mere wrestlers: broadstick was the only game for her, as she had already advertised, and her smiles were reserved for some broadstick champion with his broken head. Therefore the wrestlers made for her all the more; made awkward advances towards her, neglecting the blandishments of the others which were lavished too cheaply upon them. But she scarcely answered; she knew her power, she knew and savoured the irritation of her sisters; she tapped her foot in its white stocking and black strapped shoe, and scorned the wrestlers for their undamaged skins, though secretly she could not help esteeming their broad shoulders and their narrow loins.