Scott.

"It must be nice for summer," returned the elder lady.

"Yes, it certainly must," admitted the younger.

"Really," said another, "I wish I could go in the fighting-clip. One does
n't know what to do with one's hair at the sea-side; it's always in the
way."

"Your hair would be a public loss, Mrs. Frost," said Mrs. Alger. The
others looked at her hair, as if they had seen it now for the first time.

"Oh, I don't think so," said Mrs. Frost, in a sort of flattered coo.

"Oh, don't have it cut off!" pleaded a young girl, coming up and taking
the beautiful mane, hanging loose after the bath, into her hand. Mrs.
Frost put her arm round the girl's waist, and pulled her down against her
shoulder. Upon reflection she also kissed her.

Through a superstition, handed down from mother to daughter, that it is
uncivil and even unkind not to keep saying something, they went on
talking vapidities, where the same number of men, equally vacuous, would
have remained silent; and some of them complained that the nervous strain
of conversation took away all the good their bath had done them. Miss
Gleason, who did not bathe, was also not a talker. She kept a bright-eyed
reticence, but was apt to break out in rather enigmatical flashes, which
resolved the matter in hand into an abstraction, and left the others with
the feeling that she was a person of advanced ideas, but that, while
rejecting historical Christianity, she believed in a God of Love. This