Chapter XX: About Jim and the Duke 297 (6)

There were things like this in the magazines,--all the magazines:

* * * * *

"Listen to me, Miss (or Madam). I have something to say which will
interest You. Do you want a Perfect Complexion? Don't move. Sit
still in your chair. Cut out this Coupon. Slip it into a stamped
envelope, and we will give You what You want by return of post."

"Why Suffer? You have Headache. We have the Cure. We ask nothing
better than to take away the One and give you the Other."

"Let us lend you a Beautiful Diamond Ring to wear till you are
tired of it. When you are, we will take it back, and return you all
but five per cent. of your money."

"Don't come to Us. Let us come to You, and bring You Something. You
have always Wanted Health, Wealth, Wisdom."

"We would like to give You some Friendly Advice. We don't want a
Red Cent for it."

"You are going to have a Party, and you are worried. Don't worry.
Just 'phone to us, and we will arrange Everything for you better
than you could yourself, with no trouble to you and your servants."

* * * * *

There were so many splendid things to have, to wear, and to eat, advertised in the same kind, fatherly way, that I felt as if I had unconsciously yearned for each one of them more than for anything else in my life, and now it had been put into my head in all its fatal fascination, I couldn't possible exist another day without sending for it, to one in that procession of noble, self-sacrificing, American advertisers. I felt, too, that if anything disagreeable should happen to me, like a railway or motor car accident, I could spend the rest of my existence lying down, and still the splendid things would come running to me, if I just 'phoned or flung a stamp into space.

I mentioned something of the sort to Sally. "I wonder they don't offer to choose you a husband," said I. "I didn't know advertisements could be so interesting."

"What about your own?" she asked. "They're a hundred times quainter."

I thought hard about the _Morning Post_ and _The Queen_, but couldn't remember anything extraordinary in the advertising line, and said so.

"Perhaps you, being English, don't see anything extraordinary about a clergyman's wife offering to exchange a canary bird for six months' subscription to _Punch_; or the widow of an officer earnestly desiring an idiot lady to board with her; or a decayed gentlewoman inviting the public to give her five pounds; but we, being American, _do_," replied Sally. "Why, I'd rather read the advertisements in some of your morning papers and ladies' weeklies than I would eat."

"Talking of eating, it's lunch-time," said Potter. "There'll be a big menagerie feeding in the dining-car, but there's no good waiting for it to finish, as then there'll be no food left."

So we took his suggestion; and there was a crowd, but he had secured a table for four, and we squeezed ourselves into the places.

I have travelled abroad with Mother and Vic, where there were Americans in the dining-car, and they have been cross because they didn't get served quickly and they have said things. But in this car going to Newport, you forgot what you had had last before the next course came, yet nobody seemed to mind. They were as patient as lambs, and simply took what was given them when they could get it, although they looked as if they were used to everything very nice at home. I suppose it must have been because they were all Americans together, eating American things, with American waiters to wait upon them and no foreigners who ought to know they wouldn't stand that sort of nonsense, hanged if they would.

Some of Mrs. Ess Kay's servants had gone on before us, and some were in our train. Exactly how it was managed, I don't know; but things that would worry us into grey-haired graves don't seem to bother Americans at all; and there was the motor waiting when we arrived at the end of our journey, with a private motor omnibus for the servants and luggage.

Sometimes it is rather a pretty sight at the station where you have to get out for Battlemead, or for the village, when one of the best trains from Town comes in, especially if Mother or anyone at other big places in the neighbourhood should be having a house party. There are several rather good victorias with nice sleek horses, a handsome brougham or two, a motor car or two, to say nothing of dog carts and phaetons. But it is a poor show compared to the scene at Newport. I felt suddenly as if I were at the theatre, and the curtain had just gone up on a brilliant new act.

There was a crowd of gorgeous carriages; and jet-black varnish, gold and silver harness, and horses' brown and chestnut backs all glittered blindingly in the sun. But there were even more motors than carriages, it seemed; or else they were more conspicuous; and many were being driven by beautiful girls in muslins such as we would wear to a garden party, with nothing on their pretty heads except their splendid hair, dressed everlastingly in the same way.

Now, I saw Mrs. Ess Kay and Potter in their element. There was no suggestion that the people were not good enough for them, here. Mrs. Ess Kay radiated smiles, bowing cordially right and left, sometimes even more cordially than her friends bowed in return. Potter was taking off his straw hat and waving it. There were evidently no nobodies here. They were delighted to see everybody, for Everybody was Somebody, and some, but not all, of the Everybodies were delighted to see them. Sally alone remained unmoved; and I was glad to have her to keep me in countenance, in this new act, where I knew none of the players or what part I should be called upon to take by and by.

I had heard so much that was dazzling about Newport, which I had imagined a great white city by the sea, that the part I saw first after leaving the railway station was distinctly a blow. "_This_ quiet, half-asleep village the greatest watering place of America, perhaps of the world!" I said to myself, almost scornfully; but when we had bowled into Bellevue Avenue, where Mrs. Ess Kay said that her cottage was, I began to understand.

I wasn't sure at first sight what I did think of the great splendid houses, with mere pocket-handkerchief lawns such as people would have for suburban villas at home; but they gave me a tremendous impression of concentrated wealth. This seemed a place where everybody was rich, where millions were at a discount, and I thought--whatever else I did think--that it would be a place to stop away from unless you were happy--happy and strong and gay.

But there was one thing I was very sure of. The Avenue itself was more full than our Park in the topmost height of the Season.

People don't look happy, driving in the Park, not even the pretty people. I have found that, whenever I have been, and though that isn't so very often yet, Vic says it is really and truly always the same.

The great beauties look bored, and some of them have their faces painted and the air of wearing transformations; but not one of the charming women driving up and down Bellevue Avenue that afternoon looked bored, and hardly any were painted. I never saw people appear to be so delighted with life, and so thoroughly alive, as if the glorious sea air were frothing in their veins, like champagne.

In the Park you don't see people laughing and talking to each other in carriages. They simply lean back on the cushions with an expression that seems to say, "This is the only thing I can think of to do, so I'm doing it just to kill time." Probably they don't really feel like that, but they look it. And as for the people who sit and watch, or stand and wait, they've usually a strained expression in their eyes, as if they were afraid of missing somebody or something of importance.

But here in Bellevue Avenue everybody was smiling and chatting; and I noticed that the men weren't so preternaturally alert as the men in New York. Some had actually taken time to get fat, which, so far I'd had reason to suppose, was a thing that never happened to American men.

And somehow the young girls had the air of being a great deal more important than we are at home. You could tell from the very way they sat and held up their heads in the motor cars and dog carts and other things, that they thought the world was theirs, and they were _the_ people to know in it. One was driving a tandem, and she didn't look more than seventeen. I was glad when she bowed to Mrs. Ess Kay, because she was pretty and I made up my mind that I should like to know her.

"That's Cora Pitchley's step-daughter, Carolyn," said Mrs. Ess Kay. "Do you remember Margaret Taylour telling anecdotes of Cora? She doesn't bother much with the girl. People are talking about them both rather a lot this year, they say."

"Carolyn," I repeated. "What a pretty name, and how American-sounding, somehow. Fancy her driving tandem, with only that tiny groom if anything should happen. She must be plucky. How old is she?"

"Eighteen. She was one of last October's buds."

"October's buds," I repeated. "It sounds poetical--but unseasonable."

Potter answered with a laugh.

"Yes, we like things out of season in America, so we bring out most of our buds in October. Then they have the whole winter to bloom in, you know, before they're grafted on another stalk."

"Here comes Cora herself, now, in Tom Doremus's Electra," said Mrs. Ess Kay. "It must make Mrs. Van der Windt wild, his going so much with the Pitchley lot, as she can't stand them, and would keep Cora and Carolyn out of everything in Newport if she could."

I didn't wonder at Mr. Doremus, though, as I bowed to him and found time to know exactly how Mrs. Pitchley looked and what she wore, in the half second before our two motors flashed apart. I thought her splendidly handsome, and I liked the gleam in her dark grey eyes, which promised fun. But just then our chauffeur slowed down before a house which seemed to cover about a quarter of a mile of ground.

"Welcome to my little cottage, dear Betty," said Mrs. Ess Kay.

If this is her idea of a cottage, I don't know what her conception of a castle must be! And yet, when you come to analyse it, there really is something about the place which suggests a kind of glorified, Titanic cottage, rather too grand for a king, unless he were a fairy king, but possibly suited to an Emperor. But I do believe rich Americans think that what is good enough for a king is only _just_ good enough for them at a pinch;--and I've heard Mrs. Ess Kay call Windsor dreadfully shabby.

Her "cottage" looks as it were built of grey satinwood, but it is really shingles; and shingles can be the loveliest material imaginable, it seems, for the covering of a house, especially with a foundation of granite sparkling with mica. They are soft and shimmery in their tints, these shingles, as a dove's breast; some are dark, some light, but all are feathery in effect; and altogether The Moorings, with its gables, and porches, and bow windows, and balconies and wide verandahs, gives the effect of a huge, ruffly and motherly grey bird with her wings spread wide to shelter her birdlings.

I felt quite content to be one of the birdlings as I went in. I am sorry to say I'm not a bit fonder of Mrs. Ess Kay than I was in the ship; but the "cottage" looked so hospitable and jolly, and the air and the sunshine sparkled so, that I couldn't help feeling that it was pleasant to be young, and alive, and on the threshold of amusing new adventures. I was happy, and I would have liked to sing. I wanted to be very good friends with everybody, including Potter; and I fell in love with the house, the minute I set foot on the front verandah.

The great gorgeous palace in New York is far grander, of course, and must have cost four or five times as much; still, only very rich people could have built and furnished The Moorings, or afford to live in it.

There is a big square hall, not to be compared to ours at Battlemead, of course, though the Persian rugs and the pictures are fine; but the staircase is peculiarly charming. It looks a staircase made for sitting out dances with men you like, and evidently it knows its value as a flirting place and lives up to it, for there are fat, bright-coloured silk and satin cushions resting invitingly against the wall, on each one of the shallow steps. Most of the rooms are enormous, and consist half of quaint leaded windows, with seats underneath. But better than anything else is the verandah, which runs all round the house, and is not only as wide as a good-sized room, but is fitted up like a succession of rooms. The delicate bead curtains that glitter like a rain of green and white and rose-coloured jewels give you a feeling of privacy, for you can see through them without being seen. The satiny grey floor is half covered with exquisite rugs; and everywhere there are Oriental tables and chairs, and cushiony sofas and green hammocks with frilly pink pillows, and screens, and bowers of palms and bright azaleas. I should like to live on that verandah swinging slowly in a hammock, and looking through the cascade of glittering beads at the sea and sky. I spoke this thought out aloud, but Potter said I would soon learn that there wasn't much time in Newport for looking at the sea and sky.

"Why, isn't that partly what you come to Newport for?" I asked.

They all laughed. "You just wait and find out," answered Potter. "And we'll work you pretty hard doing it."

Mrs. Ess Kay and Sally took me up to show me my room and theirs, and Potter said that he would go round and look in at the Casino, but he would come back and have tea with us, as soon as he had seen "what there was doing."

Each bedroom is done in a colour, and mine is the "white room." It was almost too heavy-sweet with some powerful flower fragrance, when we went in. For an instant I could not think what it was; but in another moment I had seen on tables and cabinets and window shelves, great bowls of water lilies, rising out of their dark leaves like moons out of cloud banks.

"From Potter," said Mrs. Ess Kay. "He telegraphed for them to be here, and sent word to the servants just how he wanted them arranged. I must say he does think of rather pretty things when he cares to please. And he _does_ care to please you, Betty. But you know that without my telling you, don't you, my Lady Witch?"

It was hard-hearted of me, but all my pleasure in the gleaming white beauties went out, like a bursting bubble. It gets on my nerves to be grateful to Potter three or four times a day!

Nevertheless, when he came back (which he did after we had dressed, and were having tea behind the rain of glittering glass) I had to thank him prettily. He was pleased, but was evidently thinking about something else.

"I didn't get to the Casino, after all," said he. "I met Mrs. Pitchley going out to make a call (she was on her way home, it seems, when we met her) and she offered to turn back if I'd go with her, so I did."

"Now, see here, Potter Parker," broke in Mrs. Ess Kay, "I don't wish you to set up as another of Cora Pitchley's champions. It's all very well for Margaret Taylour to be forever quoting her; and she is fun, but she goes around being original in the wrong way, that nobody admires. That is, she does what she wants and not what other people want her to do. Margaret spends her summers at Blue Bay, and I spend mine at Newport, and I'm not going to have Mrs. Van der Windt down on me, or on my brother, either, if I can help it."

"Thanks for good advice," replied Potter airily. "But may be, when you hear what Mrs. Pitchley had to say to me, you'll change your tune."

Mrs. Ess Kay raised her eyebrows, but her eyes would look curious. "What could Cora Pitchley say that would have any particular effect on me?" she asked.

"She knows for a fact that she isn't to be asked to the Pink Ball on the twenty-third, and that Mrs. Van der Windt herself scratched your name off the list before she sailed for Europe."

Mrs. Ess Kay's face went a dull, ugly red, and she laughed a loud laugh which sounded as if it would be the same colour. "As for Cora, I can _quite_ understand; but I don't believe the woman would have dared to try to exclude _me_," she said in a quivery voice.

"Why shouldn't she have dared, when you come to think of it?"

"Well, anyhow--she don't dare _now_."

"No, naturally, she won't dare now. You're as smart as they make 'em, Kath."

Then, for some reason, they both turned and gazed at me with a "thank-goodness-here's-a-floating-spar" sort of look, while Sally examined the grounds in her tea-cup, with that funny little three-cornered smile of hers.

"Was that the thing you thought would change me toward Cora Pitchley?" asked Mrs. Ess Kay.

"Yes, I thought it would give you a sort of fellow feeling."

"It doesn't," said she, shortly, "and nobody but a man could have thought it would. It makes me feel all the more that I don't want to be mixed up with her, for--for Betty's sake."

Potter whistled, with one thumb in a breast pocket. "For the che-ild's sake," he remarked dramatically; and Mrs. Ess Kay looked angry.

"I shan't invite the Pitchleys to my big affair," said she; "the affair I'm going to have for Betty."

"Oh, but you must please not put yourself out for me!" I exclaimed. "I should be so sorry to have you do that."

Potter laughed "Don't you try to rob her of her dearest triumph, Lady Daisy. You're the big gem for the middle of the setting. You're the Kohinoor."

"Potter! You ought to be ashamed of yourself, talking to her like that," said Mrs. Ess Kay. "But all he means, Betty, is that I shall be very glad to do anything I can to make your visit pleasant; and it will be no trouble at all for me to give an entertainment, you may be quite sure."

She said this as the Queen might say that it didn't matter to her whether there were seventy-five people or seventy-six asked to a garden party; and I realised that I was snubbed; so I said no more.

IX

ABOUT BATHING, A DRESS, AND AN EARL

Mrs. Ess Kay had a headache next morning, and stopped in bed. She couldn't speak or be spoken to, and so we couldn't possibly ask her advice about going to Bailey's Beach for a dip in the sea. Potter--whose proposal it was--said that this was perhaps Providential, as she was almost certain to want me to stay in till I could be taken out officially. "But you don't need to know that," he added.

I looked at Sally, and she laughed; so I knew that I was to go.

"Oh, but what about bathing clothes!" I exclaimed, on a sudden thought. "How stupid of me not to have remembered that I would want them, before I left home, or in New York!"

"I reckon it would have been stupid of us if _we_ hadn't remembered," said Sally. Then she went on,--irrelevantly, it seemed at first: "What day of the month is to-morrow?"

"The twenty-ninth of July," said Potter, promptly, while I was resigning myself, after a slight struggle, to the fact that I had lost track of dates.

"Seem's to me that's somebody's birthday, isn't it?" Sally appeared to address her remark to the ceiling.

"How _did_ you know?" I exclaimed.

"A little bird told me; the kind that builds in birthday books. It lives on a table in Lady Victoria's 'den'."

"Fancy your keeping the date in your head all this time!"

"I've a weakness for remembering birthdays--when I'm fond of the people who own them. You see, everybody thinks about Christmas, and I don't want to be confused with everybody, in the minds of just those special people. Now, the truth is, I've got a little birthday present upstairs, which I didn't mean you should see until tomorrow, but as part of it may come in rather handy this morning, perhaps we might run up and have a look at it."

"Oh, Sally, you dear!" I exclaimed.

"Oh, Sally, you wretch, to have kept that birthday to yourself; I want to be on in this act," grumbled Potter. But I hardly heard him, I was so excited about what I was going to find upstairs.

We went to my room, Sally and I; and she rang for Louise, who was told to fetch from what Sally called her "closet" a certain black "trunk" of whose existence Louise was evidently already aware.

It was a good-sized box, big enough to hold two or three dresses; and when it was opened by Sally after Louise had gone, it proved to contain three and a half.

One of the three was a blue gauze ball gown, embroidered with patterns of thistles in tiny sparkling things that looked like diamonds; the second was pink tulle, with garlands of tiny roses; the third was a white linen, made as only Americans know how to make up linens; and the half was--well, I was not quite sure what it was at first, though I could see that it was pretty. It was pale green and there were two parts of it. The bigger of the two (it was not very big) was of soft silk, and extremely fluffy. It had a low-necked and short-sleeved bodice, and attached to that was a skirt--or something that would have been a skirt if it had had more time to grow. The second part was silk, too, but more difficult to describe. Perhaps I'd do best to say that it was like long stockings, only it was in one piece and evidently meant to fasten round the waist.

"There's also a pair of sandals and a really sweet cap, deah," Sally explained.

"Is it a fancy dress for a little girl?" I asked puzzled.

"For a little girl about your size. Why, you funny child, it's your _bathing_ dress. I had to get it and all the other things ready made, for there wasn't time for anything more than having them altered to your measurement if they were to be ready for your birthday."

"Oh, Sally, are they _all_ for me?"

"Well, they're for nobody else. It's _your_ birthday."

Of course I told her she was an angel, and so she was, quite an exceptional kind of an angel; and I kissed her, and was saying a great many things, when she stopped me. "So glad you like them, deah. But now we must be moving if we're to have our bath this morning. Louise can't leave Katherine, but we'll have one of the other maids come with our things. It's getting late."

I felt frightfully. "It _is_ late, isn't it?" said I, hopefully, looking at my watch. "Perhaps it's too late to go this morning, after all."

"Not a bit of it," said Sally. "Come along."

"I'm not sure but that I'd better stop in, if Mr. Parker thinks Mrs. Stuyvesant-Knox would want me to," I floundered on.

"She won't mind--not much, anyway, if we don't take you to the Casino without her," Sally tried to reassure me. But her eyes had begun to twinkle.

"Don't you think she might? There are a lot of letters I ought----"

"Now child, out with it. Don't you like the bathing dress?"

"Oh, I _admire_ it immensely," I stammered. "It's like a--a picture. But--I can't see myself wearing it. That is, I can't bear to think of anyone else seeing me wear it."

Sally went off into a fit of musical Southern laughter. "You poor baby. I forgot the shock it might be to you, if you're accustomed only to English bathing clothes. They certainly are the _limit_! Have you never been to Trouville or Ostend?"

I shook my head, sad at having to seem ungrateful. But how could I help it?

"Well, they have this kind there, and so they do here. Everybody has it. My prettiest one is much like yours, only it's poppy-coloured. Katherine's is cornflower blue this year, and she's got a black one and a lilac one. When you see all the others prancing about in the same sort of things, you won't feel a bit funny."

I was far from sure that I should attain to such a peaceful state of mind as not to "feel funny"; but Sally had called me a baby, and I had to redeem myself from that aspersion at any price. So I tried to compose my countenance over a beating heart, and think about other things on the way to the beach, as you do if you are going to the dentist's.

Potter went with us, though I supposed that when we came to the end, he would bid us good-bye, and trot off to the place where the men bathed, wherever that might be. Our things had been taken on ahead by a servant or two, and we walked, as the day was perfect, and I was thankful to get a little exercise.

We met a great many people whom Sally and Potter knew, and just as Potter had said, "Here we are at Bailey's Beach," that handsome Mrs. Pitchley and her stepdaughter, with Mr. Doremus came up. They called to us, so we stopped to speak, and I was pleased because I'd been wanting to know them. We were introduced, and I was wondering what Mrs. Ess Kay would do if she could see us chatting with the Pitchleys in sight of all Newport, when a little thin man, looking perfectly furious, with a striped bathing suit rolled up under his arm, came hopping along towards us, as if he were a cricket ball that somebody had batted off the beach.

His panama hat was on the back of his head; his single eyeglass on its chain was flying out behind him in the breeze, and my first thought was how comical he looked. My second, as he came nearer, was something quite different.

"Why, Mohunsleigh!" I cried.

He stopped hopping so abruptly that he stumbled, and nearly fell down.

"Hullo, Betty," he growled, hauling off his hat as if he hated the bother of doing it. "Where did you spring from?"

"Home. Where on earth did you spring from?" I echoed.

"They've sprung me off their beastly beach," said he, glaring, and sticking in his eyeglass. Then he almost waved his hideous little bathing suit at me. "Wouldn't let me bathe, the bounders."

"Wouldn't let you bathe?"

"No. Said, 'You can't get in here. _This_ beach is for millionaires.' I'm blest if I don't shake the sand off my feet as soon as I can pack up and get out."

"No, no, don't do that," I begged. "There's some mistake, perhaps."

"No, there isn't," said he. "I'm not a millionaire; but I did think I looked as if I could afford a bathe."

"Sally dear, do let me introduce my cousin, Lord Mohunsleigh," I said in a great hurry.

Potter opened his eyes at the thin little man, and Mrs. and Miss Pitchley looked at him with interest.

"Do introduce us all," laughed Mrs. Pitchley, "and then we can sympathise with Lord--Lord--oh, but I can _never_ learn to pronounce him."

I introduced him to the mother and stepdaughter then, though I hadn't thought of its being necessary, and explained that my cousin, though spelled very elaborately, was pronounced Moonslee.

He had evidently abandoned all intention of immediate flight now, and his rage was visibly cooling. He was looking at Mrs. Pitchley with quite as much interest as she showed in him, and with even more at the girl, although he talked to Potter Parker, and answered his questions quite civilly. He explained that he had actually been ordered away from the beach, bathing suit and all, by some "impertinent ass of an official."

Potter was hospitably distressed, but Mrs. Pitchley was moved to laughter.

"Ha, ha, won't the man be sick when he sees you coming back with us, and hears us call you Lord Mohunsleigh?--for if you'll point him out in time, that's what I _shall_ call you, right under his nose. You see, this is a private beach. We all subscribe for our bath houses; but you'll be our guest, of course, and I'll put Mr. Pitchley's box at your service. He's gone off fishing for a few days. Only to think of the Earl of Mohunsleigh being turned back. Delicious!"

"Can't say I thought of it that way till now," said Mohunsleigh, pulling his wiry moustache, and condescending to grin slightly at last. "But it's true, I'm _not_ a millionaire, you know."

"You're an earl, you can't say you're not, for I read in _The Flashlight_ only the other day that the Earl of Mohunsleigh had sailed for America, though it couldn't be ascertained on what ship."

"Didn't know there was any particular reason why it should be ascertained," said Mohunsleigh. "I've run over, to visit a chap in California,--dashed nice chap, too, but thought I'd have a shot at New York first, and blest if I could stand it; never could stand being grilled since a sunstroke I got when I was serving in India."

"Dear me, who and what does a lord serve?" broke in Miss Pitchley; which surprised Mohunsleigh and me both so much that he stared, and I blushed. But she didn't, though no girl under Vic's age at least would think of cutting in like that with a stranger, at home. Mohunsleigh was delighted to be spoken to by her, though, one could see. His eyes brightened up, and he smiled, looking straight at her, as if she were a new and absolutely desirable kind of rifle. I say rifle, because Mohunsleigh is a great shot, and would rather spend his money (what he has of it) on a new invention by way of a gun than anything else.

"Used to be in the army. I've chucked it now," he explained, affably, beginning to look quite nice. For really, though small and wiry, with ginger-coloured hair and moustache and no-coloured eyes, Mohunsleigh isn't an ugly man, when you come to notice his nice, sharp features. He's only a distant cousin of mine, and so old (he's nearly forty) that in the first years of our acquaintance he made himself agreeable by teaching me to ride on his foot; but I always liked him--whenever I remembered his existence. Naturally, though, this hasn't been often, as one of his many eccentricities is to be continually prowling at the ends of the earth--anywhere, where there may be animals to shoot. What kind, he doesn't seem to care, if they are only large enough. Once, he was fond of tigers; but the last thing he had a fad for was polar bears, and he sent mother a skin, which makes the oak room smell strongly of camphor.

"I hope, anyhow, you're going to pay a good long visit to Newport," said Mrs. Pitchley.

"I meant to go back to-morrow morning," replied Mohunsleigh. "But perhaps I might stop on a bit longer."

"We'll give you some fun," volunteered Miss Pitchley, looking frightfully pretty.

"Will you?" said Mohunsleigh. "Jolly nice of you. I must think about it." Then he deigned to remember that I was his little long-lost cousin; asked when I'd arrived on this side the water, and a few other things; but he looked more at Miss Pitchley than at me. I suppose it is difficult to be much excited about a person who has taken riding lessons on your foot.

Potter asked Mohunsleigh where he was staying, and when he heard it was at an hotel, he said his sister wouldn't allow that to go on. Lord Mohunsleigh would have to come to The Moorings, that was settled; and his man must be told to pack up his things directly. Mightn't word be sent by messenger at once?

"Haven't brought a man, thanks awfully. Shed that habit long ago," said my cousin. "I've got precious little luggage, too; picked this thing up in a shop as I came along, and they charged me the deuce of a lot for it. You're awfully good, you know, and all that, to offer to put me up, but I only came prepared to spend a night or two."

Then Potter insisted, and blew all Mohunsleigh's objections away one by one, as if they had been threads of cobweb; still, my cousin wouldn't give a definite answer, perhaps not understanding American hospitality, or perhaps having other ideas which he preferred. At all events, we went to the bathing machines (which weren't bathing machines at all, but dear little houses) without anything being decided. The only invitation which Mohunsleigh had really accepted was Mrs. Pitchley's, for her husband's bathing box.

She kept her word, and called him "Lord Mohunsleigh" in quite a high voice, just as we passed the man who had refused to let him go onto the beach before; but the man didn't seem impressed in the least. I think he didn't even recognise Mohunsleigh as the same person, or if he did, he pretended very cleverly not to.

I had forgotten the horror of the bathing dress in my surprise at meeting Mohunsleigh, but it fell over me again like a cloud, as soon as I was shut up in the bathing box with those wisps of green silk. I wouldn't have the maid help me, and wrestled with the ordeal alone. It took me some time; but when everything was on (there were only four things, counting the cap and smart little sandals) I couldn't say to myself that the effect wasn't attractive. It was; and I did approve of myself in the quaint head-dress, which was more like a fetching silk toque with an Alsatian bow in front, than a mere cap.

But the awful moment came when I was ready, with my hand on the door. I'm sure Joan of Arc must have felt like that when she had let her hair down, and put on that graceful white dress of hers one sees in the pictures, to be burned. She may have been dimly aware that she was looking quite her best, as I was; but even that couldn't have buoyed her up much at the moment, and it didn't me.

As I stood hesitating, somebody knocked. I peeped out, and it was Sally--quiet, unassuming little Sally, with her middle-aged airs--looking like one of Stan's Gaiety Girl photographs, in a short, low-necked dress of bright poppy colour, with silk legs as shiny as an Archdeacon's, only with quite a different effect.

"Come on, my green Undine," said she; and I came, because she pulled me so suddenly that otherwise I should have fallen flat on my nose.

Having seen her dressed so much in my style, it wasn't quite as bad as before; and when I was out of my box,--like one of those little barometer women that tell fair weather,--there was Mrs. Pitchley in crimson, and Carolyn Pitchley in white, and lots of pretty women, all with the same lovely stockings. There hadn't been any standing about when we arrived, because we were early, not having gone to the Casino first as the others had, and it was a relief to find them; or it was, until I had a great shock.

Instead of the men being away at a separate beach of their own, they were put with us, and kept popping out of boxes every minute, and running up to talk to the girls they knew, just as calmly as if they were in evening dress. My eyes almost came out of my head for an instant. Then I just swallowed hard, and leaped over about five centuries of prejudice as if I were jumping across a tiny beck.

"Everything's a matter of custom," said I to myself; and in another minute I was racing gaily down to the water, hand in hand with Sally, as if we had been little girls with sand pails and shovels.

I expected to feel as if I had plunged into a million-gallon bath of iced water, when I got out among the creamy breakers; but judging from the sensation, Americans have had their part of the Atlantic beautifully warmed from underneath, with some patent heating apparatus. It would be just like them!

The sandy beach is so level, you can patter out ever so far, until you finally have to bob up and down for the rolling waves, as if they were Royalties--and so they are, for the Kingdom of Mer. I can swim a little, and Potter took me beyond the breakers. It was great fun, under that arch of turquoise sky, with the sun dancing on the clear green water, as if the millionaires of Newport had been sprinkling gold pieces. But the best of all was the floating platform, about a hundred yards from the beach, where we sat and let the emeralds and pearls that the Princesses of Mer threw, spray over us.

At home, when you are at the sea, your governess or some other person who thinks enjoyment ought to be measured off by rule, sits on the shore looking at her watch; and when you have been in exactly twenty minutes she tells you to come out directly, or you will catch a chill. I've always wondered what it would do to you if you stopped in for twenty-one minutes, though I never had the chance to try; but in America all that is quite different, as different as the very way they say "seaside," with their accent on the first instead of the last syllable.

Nobody thinks about watches. You just bathe and bathe as long as you feel like it. When you are tired of it you come out; then you bake yourself in the sand for a little while if you like, and run back to begin over again. It is heavenly. No other adjective half expresses it.

When we did really make up our minds to stop out for good, and had dressed ourselves, feeling like goddesses just born of the foam (or gods, as the case might be), we all met--our party, the Pitchleys and my cousin,--to arrange about what Mohunsleigh would do.

It seemed that Mrs. Pitchley had invited him to lunch, and as she had been so kind about the bathhouse, he explained to Potter, he thought that he couldn't very well refuse. About stopping on, he would decide later; but he consented to drive with us in the afternoon, in a motor car of Potter's that holds six. By that time, he would have had time to send a wire to a friend of his in New York, and to make up his mind what he had better do about going back.

When we got home, we found Mrs. Ess Kay much better, and up. She was inclined at first to be cross with Sally and Potter for taking me to the beach; but when she heard about Mohunsleigh, she forgot to be vexed, and seemed almost excited about him, I can't think why.

She asked lots of questions, very quickly, one after the other, brightening up when Potter told how he had invited Mohunsleigh to come to The Moorings, but looking quite strained and wild at the news about his lunching with the Pitchleys.

"You _oughtn't_ to have let him go, Potter," she said.

Potter shrugged his shoulders--those square American shoulders of his. "Strange as it may seem to you, he wanted to. That settled it. I didn't monkey with the gunpowder."

Mrs. Ess Kay's lips went down at the corners, and her eyes flashed.

"How easy it is to see that woman's game," said she. "Cora Pitchley knows that Mrs. Van der Windt and the committee will be only too anxious for us to go to the Pink Ball _now_, and she thinks she sees a way of getting there too, after all. Mark my words, she's got her Earl; it'll go hard with her if she doesn't _stick_ to him. Betty, can't you do something? He's your cousin. You've a right to him."

"I don't know that I want him particularly," I confessed. "Mohunsleigh's a dear, queer old thing, and I'm fond of him; but we haven't seen much of him at home, for years. And I know he can't be bothered with me."

"Anyhow, he certainly ought to be here," said Mrs. Ess Kay, anxiously; "it will be perfectly loathsome if we have to sit still and see the Pitchley's gobble him up."

"Poor Mohunsleigh!" I exclaimed. "Why, what will they _do_ with him?" And for a lurid instant I beheld Miss Pitchley and Carolyn as beautiful ogresses, with their lips red--too red.

"They'll go to the Pink Ball with him, and by him. They couldn't without him. That's what they'll _do_," said Mrs. Ess Kay, as if she saw my cousin's whitening bones picked clean by the Pitchley family. "And we shall have to be intimate with them, the whole time he stays."

"Oh, you needn't feel bound to for my sake. It isn't as though Mohunsleigh----" I began; but Mrs. Ess Kay snapped my poor sentence in two, as if it had been cotton on a reel.

"I have to think for all of us," said she; "Cora Pitchley is a climber."

We changed our dresses (Sally says one must be forever changing one's dress at Newport), lunched; and then at the door appeared a gorgeous white motor car lined with scarlet, which I had never seen before. As we all had on white, from head to foot, we matched it beautifully; and feeling that we looked nice enough even to grace an accident, if it _must_ come, we started to pick up Carolyn Pitchley and my cousin.

Mrs. Ess Kay didn't go, for she wasn't quite herself yet; and besides, she perhaps thought that in the circumstances Mohunsleigh ought to be brought to call before she met him informally. I don't know that any of us were as sorry as we ought to have been not to have her.

The Pitchleys' house, which is called the Chateau de Plaisance, is on a much grander scale than The Moorings. It thinks it is an old French Chateau, and tries to convey the same impression to beholders, as do several others of more or less the same sort. But it's a hopeless effort. The poor dears might as well give up and resign themselves once for all to being a blot on the exquisite blue and gold landscape; though perhaps if they can hold out for two or three hundred years, they may do better. The farther we went, along a glorious road called the Cliff Drive, and the more charming Colonial houses and delightful "cottages" I saw, the more I felt that the regular palaces were mistakes, with Newport for a setting and the sea for a background. I am glad that I didn't live at the time when all the real castles of the world were young and awkward. Perhaps they looked just as crude as these, at first, though it's hard to imagine it.

When we went back, the first thing that Mrs. Ess Kay asked, was: "Well, what about Lord Mohunsleigh?"

"He's made up his mind to stop, and send for his things," said I.

"You gave him my note? He's coming to us?"

"I gave him the note, and he's coming round presently to thank you for being so kind. But--he feels he had better stay with the Pitchleys. You see, it's like this. They happen to be sending a servant to New York to-day, to do some commissions for Mrs. Pitchley, so the man will go to Mohunsleigh's hotel too. And as they're doing so much for him, and Mrs. Pitchley and her husband know some friends of his at Home, he thinks--But he'll tell you all about it himself."

"I told you so!" said Mrs. Ess Kay.

X

ABOUT A VIOLET TEA AND A MILLIONAIRE

While we were motoring, Mrs. Ess Kay had been terribly busy with her secretary, getting invitations ready for a Violet Tea.

She was giving the Tea, she explained, to introduce me to Newport Society, and she was having a Violet one because it was not the right time of year for violets.

I meekly suggested that as a reason for giving some other kind of Tea, but she said not at all. She wished to have that kind because violets were hard to get, though not impossible. I would see when the time came that she could get them. And I should also see, if it were indeed true that I did not know, what a Violet Tea was. She wanted it to be a surprise for me; she thought I would like it.

I hadn't long to wait before learning the true inwardness of a Violet Tea, for Mrs. Ess Kay was determined to get me "out" as soon as possible; and it seems that in America the time to bring a girl out is at a tea. At least, that is one way; and as Mrs. Ess Kay was even then planning to give something very big just before the much talked about "Pink Ball," so as to "take the shine off that grand affair," she wished to get the teacups washed up before she sent out the next invitations.

I'm sure Mother wouldn't take as much trouble for a house party to meet the King and Queen, as Mrs. Ess Kay did for that Violet Tea; and I daren't think even now--though it happened weeks ago--of the money she must have spent.

For one thing, she and Sally and I had to have violet dresses. She would buy mine (I don't see how I should have done it, if she hadn't, especially as Vic wrote just then that Mother felt poorer than ever, and That Man hadn't yet proposed), and it was beautiful; pale violet silk muslin, trimmed with violets and their leaves. Then violet and silver livery was ordered in a great hurry for the four footmen--to be worn on one afternoon, and no more! But these things were mere sketchy details, compared to other preparations.

One room, where tea was to be served, was entirely draped with violet silk, from the palest to the darkest shades; and for the smaller of the two drawing-rooms--the one where Mrs. Ess Kay would stand to receive her guests--wire frames were made, from measurements, to fit and cover all four walls. I couldn't imagine what these frames were for, at first, but when their hour came, they were padded with moss and covered with fresh violets. The curtains were taken down from the windows, and a network of violets was hung up in their place, with an effect of great loveliness when the light streamed through the screen of flowers. And even this was not all, for a soft thick mat of grass and moss was spread over the polished floor, with a sprinkling of violets. All the furniture was taken away, and instead, along the walls, were placed banks of artificial moss and violets. No doubt these would have been real, too, but when crushed, they would have stained the dresses of those that sat upon them. Altogether, the room was turned into a woodsy bower of violets; and I was given a great bunch of the dear flowers to carry.

There had been only a week in which to prepare these sensational effects, but everything was finished in time, and without flurry. Already I knew a great many of Mrs. Ess Kay's friends; and on the day of the tea it seemed that each person whose acquaintance I had made had remembered me with a cartwheel of violets. All my flowers were placed in vases on tables in the big drawing-room, adjoining the bower of violets; and as a card was attached to each bunch, pinned on the masses of violet satin ribbon which trailed from it, each giver could have the pleasure of seeing how his gift compared with his neighbour's. It was a wonderful display--a violet show. And, as Mrs. Ess Kay had said, "it was not the right time of the year for violets."

We stood on our feet for hours, smiled yards of smiles, and said the same things over and over again so many times, that I began to feel like a phonograph doll which I saw in my first New York shop. Only, when I ran down nobody wound me up, and I had to go on by myself as best I could, which was fatiguing, and made the machinery squeak.

But everybody said it was a huge success. The New York papers had each more than a column about the "function," as they called it, and Mrs. Ess Kay was piously happy.

I had thought we were very gay before; but after the Violet Tea, from getting up to going to bed, we never had a moment that hadn't its own appointed place in the procession of hours, like a bead in a long rosary.

After breakfast, we went to the Casino, to play tennis, listen to the concert, or pretend to, and to gabble. There, we would meet everybody we knew; and it was odd to see the calm, but slightly conscious air of superiority with which the Everybodies, going in or out, passed the poor nobodies assembled to watch the Casino entrance. Just as the middle and lower class people stand till they are ready to drop, only to see the Queen drive into the Park, or leave Buckingham Palace dreadfully bored, to open a bridge, so these Americans jostle each other to see their millionaires and especially millionaires, going to enjoy themselves. Fancy if Londoners reduced themselves to a state of collapse for the pleasure of seeing Mr. Beit take off his hat to Mrs. Wertheimer! But the millionaires in America seem to be like our aristocracy, only more important, for the non millionaires take a great deal more trouble to stare at them than the common people do at us.

After the Casino, there was always the beach, and the most delightful things happened at the beach. It was never twice the same. Then, we would lunch with some one, or some one would lunch with us at The Moorings. Afterwards there would be a drive, calls to make, perhaps two or three wonderful "At Homes," or concerts, with great singers and entertainers from New York; twenty minutes' rest, and then a scramble to dress for dinner, with a "dinner dance" to follow, or amateur theatricals.

Of course, as I haven't been presented yet, and don't know anything about what the Season is like in Town, except what Vic has told me, I can't judge of the differences at first hand; but then, Vic has told me a lot, and I have heard Stan and Loveland talk; besides, one seems to know one's own country and country people by instinct without having actually to see what they do; and I'm sure that even in the smartest set at home they don't dream of bothering their heads to think of such original entertainments as in America.