which set off her fresh, clear skin and her bright hair.  Phebe scorned caps entirely, and no sunburn could roughen her cheeks.  Her suit fitted her, and she was as trim and comely in it as in her more conventional raiment.  Once on the beach, she had a trick of standing for a moment, looking out at the distant water with an unconsciousness which was not feigned, then rapidly measuring the incoming wave, she chose the exact moment of its rising to curl over and break, plunged through it and, after an interval when the onlookers waited breathlessly, she reappeared on the farther side and swam tranquilly away up the shore.  Hope might cling to the lifeline and be boiled to her heart’s content, and Theodora was welcome to paddle about in the thick of the crowd, with Hubert and Billy beside her.  To Phebe, there was something fairly intoxicating in the knowledge of her strength, in feeling the free, firm play of her muscles and in conquering the power of the sea.

The wind had been blowing strongly, all the morning, and the waves were rolling in heavily.  Their green tops were crested with white foam which rose high and higher, curved over as softly as a rose petal, balanced for a brief second, then fell with a crash and went flowing up the bank of the beach, circling and twisting in countless eddies that now and then crept to the very awnings and caused a stampede among their inhabitants.  A dozen portly matrons sat in the sand, rocking to and fro as the wave came up about them and receded; and children innumerable pranced around them, playing tag with the tricky surf that often caught them unawares.

“Grandma,” Mac said, trudging up to the McAlister awning with a pail of sand under his arm; “isn’t vat sky just lovely?  I’d like to fly up vere, and maybe God would let me work ve sun.”

“Do you think you could work it, Mac?”

“Yes, it goes just like ve clock.  He winds it up wiv a key, and ven it goes all right.  Grandma!”

“Well?”

Mac dropped his sand into her lap, and then plumped himself down by her side.

“Did you see vat funny man in ve pinky suit?  Well, he’s Mrs. Benson’s boy.”

“Hush, dear!” Mrs. McAlister said hastily, for Mrs. Benson’s awning was next her own.

“What for should I hush?  He is funny; just you look at him and see.”

“Mac is earning his right to a place in Dragons’ Row,” Hubert observed from the spot, ten feet away, where he was taking a sunbath between plunges.  “Why don’t you come in, mother?”

“I dare not face the critics,” she answered laughingly, while she emptied Mac’s sand from her lap.  “I shouldn’t come out of it as well as Babe does.”

Hubert raised himself on his elbow and looked after his sister with evident satisfaction.

“She’s the best swimmer on the beach, except Mr. Drayton,” he said, as he dropped back again and burrowed his brown arms into the sand.  “If he gives her many more lessons, she’ll beat him at his own trade, and that’s saying a good deal.”