with the "kids" as to take tea on the veranda of the club-house
with the matrons. To each her manner was always as though she
were of their age. When she met the latter on the beach road, she
greeted them riotously and joyfully by their maiden names. And
the matrons liked it. In comparison the deference shown them by
the other young women did not so strongly appeal.

"When I'm jogging along in my station wagon," said one of them,
"and Helen shrieks and waves at me from her car, I feel as though
I were twenty, and I believe that she is really sorry I am not
sitting beside her, instead of that good-looking Latimer man,
who never wears a hat. Why does he never wear a hat? Because he
knows he's good-looking, or because Helen drives so fast he can't
keep it on?"

"Does he wear a hat when he is not with Helen?" asked the new
arrival. "That might help some."

"We will never know," exclaimed the young matron; "he never
leaves her."

This was so true that it had become a public scandal. You met
them so many times a day driving together, motoring together,
playing golf together, that you were embarrassed for them and did
not know which way to look. But they gloried in their shame. If
you tactfully pretended not to see them, Helen shouted at you.
She made you feel you had been caught doing something indelicate
and underhand.

The mothers of Fair Harbor were rather slow in accepting young