Gifford Barrett shook the water from his eyes and rubbed his right arm a little anxiously, as he staggered to his feet again.  Cicely had fled to Allyn’s side, and the young man nodded curtly to her as he stalked back to the shore.  At the water’s edge, he was greeted with a voice which sounded strangely familiar to his ears.

“How do you do?  Vat was ve time you got boiled; wasn’t it?”

No childish voice ever fell unheeded on Gifford Barrett’s ears.  The stoutest spot in his mental armor yielded to the touch of small fingers, and some of his best comradeships had been with tiny boys and girls.  Now, in an instant, all his sense of injured dignity fell away from him, and the watchers under the awnings wondered at the sudden kindliness in his face, as he grasped Mac’s pudgy fist.

“Why, Mac, who ever dreamed of seeing you here, old man!”

“I live here now,” Mac said gravely; “me and my mamma and everybody, only papa.”

“I thought you lived in Helena.”

“Not now.  We like it better here; it’s so funny to sit in ve sand and build pies.  Can you build pies?”

“Yes, and forts.”

Mac fell to prancing delightedly, quite regardless of the havoc his small shoes were creating among the bare toes of his companion.

“Oh, can you?  Truly, no joking?  Make me one now.”

“Mac!” The call came from the nearest awning.

“Vat’s mamma,” Mac said.  “She wants us.  Come.”  And he tugged at Gifford Barrett’s hand.

“Not just now, old man.”

“Come.  Aunt Teddy’s vere, and all ve rest.  Come.”

“Mac!” This time, the voice was more decided.

“Yes, mamma; but he won’t come.”

“Mac, come here at once.”

There was a brief skirmish; then as usual, Mac conquered, and Gifford Barrett was led, an unwilling victim, to the awning where sat Mac’s mother, beyond her a serried rank of Mac’s relatives and, beyond them all, a tall girl in a black suit who watched him with dancing eyes.

The situation was not an easy one.  It was Theodora who relieved it.

“Isn’t this Mr. Gifford Barrett?” she asked, rising to meet him with the easy dignity which she assumed at times and which made her husband feel so proud of her.  “You may not remember me, Mrs. Farrington; but I think I met you in New York, two years ago, at a dinner that Mrs. Goodyear gave.”  And, as she spoke, Theodora was distinctly grateful for the accident which had left a dozen old letters in the tray of her trunk.

With a grave courtesy all his own, Gifford Barrett went through the trying ordeal of an introduction in his bathing suit.  Even Phebe was forced to admit that he was well-bred, while, in the distance, Cicely capered about madly, half in rapture that the desired meeting had taken place, half in rage that she could not with dignity annex herself to the group.  For one short, ecstatic moment, she held her breath; then she vented her feelings by plunging headlong into the next wave and swimming off as fast as she could.  Instead of making his bow and then beating the decorous retreat of an eccentric recluse, Mr. Gifford Barrett, the composer of the Alan Breck Overture, had deposited his tall form in his rose-colored bathing suit on the sand at Theodora’s feet.