X

Ted and Oliver were down at the beach at Southampton two Sundays
later--week-end guests of Peter Piper--the three had been classmates at
Yale and the friendship had not lapsed like so many because Peter happened
to be rich and Ted and Oliver poor. And then there was always Elinor,
Peter's sister--Ted seemed, to Oliver's amused vision, at least, to
be looking at Elinor with the hungry eyes of a man seeing a delicate,
longed-for dream made flesh just at present instead of a girl he had known
since she first put up her hair. How nice that would be if it happened,
thought Oliver, match-makingly--how very nice indeed! Best thing in
the world for Ted--and Elinor too--if Ted would only get away from his
curiously Puritan idea that a few minor lapses from New England morality in
France constituted the unpardonable sin, at least as far as marrying a nice
girl was concerned. He stretched back lazily, digging elbows into the warm
sand.

The day had really been too hot for anything more vigorous than "just lying
around in the sun like those funny kinds of lizards," as Peter put it, and
besides, he and Oliver had an offensive-defensive alliance of The Country's
Tiredest Young Business Men and insisted that their only function in life
was to be gently and graciously amused. And certainly the spectacle about
them was one to provide amusement in the extreme for even the most mildly
satiric mind.

It was the beach's most crowded hour and the short strip of sand in front
of the most fashionable and uncomfortable place to bathe on Long Island
was gay as a patch of exhibition sweet-peas with every shade of vivid or