“Atrocious.  He is bow-legged, and he wore a rose-colored suit.  Against the green of the waves, he looked like a huge pink wishbone.”

“Did he swim beautifully?”

Phebe shook her hair back from her shoulders.

“Like a merman,” she said; “a forsaken merman with the gout.”

“Babe!”

“Well, if you must know the truth, the abject, literal truth, he hung his clothes on a hickory limb, as far as going near the water was concerned.  He waded in up to his ankles and stood there, shivering, shivering a day like this!  Then he trotted back and forth a few times and went back to the bathhouse again without letting a wave touch him.  Booby!  If he played golf, he would probably get his caddie to take him around the links in a wheelbarrow.  I do hope I shall have the pleasure of seeing the creature get boiled.”  And, with a final flirt of her hair, she marched away into the house.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

For the next week, Cicely stalked her lion patiently, warily and in vain.  Gifford Barrett had come down to Quantuck, firmly resolved that on no conditions would he consent to be lionized.  His six weeks in Maine had been all that he could endure.  He had at last come to the wise conclusion that his talent, if he had any, belonged to himself and his work, and was not to be spread out thin on biscuits and served up at afternoon teas.  He had fled from Maine and from his admiring friends in a mood dangerously near to disgust.  His nostrils were tired of incense.  He wished ozone, unflavored with anything whatsoever.  The symptom was a healthy one and portended good things for the future.  Meanwhile, it led him to choose a resort where he knew no one, where he himself was unknown, and where he could be as independent as he liked.

During the first week of his stay, he accomplished his ends.  He went his own way at his own times; he ignored the many inviting glances cast in his direction; he talked only to the bathing master, the native fishermen and the waiter at his table.  With observant eyes, he took in the least details of his surroundings; but he did it in an unseeing fashion that completely misled the members of the summer colony who discussed him largely under their awnings and wrangled solemnly over the important question as to whether he was surly, or only shy.

On his side, Gifford Barrett was gaining considerable amusement from the morning conventions on the beach.  As a general thing, he only watched the people in groups, and entertained himself with making shrewd guesses as to the probable relationships existing in those groups.  Only two individuals made distinct impressions upon him.  One of these was the tall, lithe girl in the black suit, who walked as well as she swam; the other was also a girl, but younger and less good-looking, and Gifford Barrett found himself wondering how she could possibly be in so many places