At seven-thirty young girls fluttered in and out from the dining-room like brilliant night moths, the straight-front dowagers, U-vested spouses, and slim young men in braided trousers seams crowded about the desk for the influx of mail, and read their tailor and modiste duns with the rapt and misleading expression that suggested a love rune rather than a “Please remit.”  Interested mothers elbowed for the most desirable veranda rockers; the blather of voices, the emph-umph-umph of the three-nights-a-week orchestra and the remote pound of the ocean joined in united effort.

At eight o’clock Miss Myra Sternberger yawned in her wicker rocker and raised two round and bare-to-the-elbow arms high above her head.

“Gee!” she said.  “This place is so slow it gets on my nerves—­it does!”

Mrs. Blondheim, who carried toast away from the breakfast-table concealed beneath a napkin for her daughter who remained abed until noon, paused in her Irish crochet, spread a lace wheel upon her ample knee, and regarded it approvingly.

“What you got to kick about, Miss Sternberger?  Didn’t I see you in the surf this morning with that shirtwaist drummer from Cincinnati?”

“Mr. Eckstein—­oh, I been meetin’ him down here in July for two years.  He’s a nice fellow an’ makes a good livin’—­but he ain’t my style.”

“Girls are too particular nowadays.  Take my Bella—­why, that girl’s had chances you wouldn’t believe!  But she always says to me, she says, ‘Mamma, I ain’t goin’ to marry till Mr. Right comes along.’”

“That’s just the same way with me.”

“My Bella’s had chances—­not one, but six.  You can ask anybody who knows us in New York the chances that goil has had.”

“I ain’t in a hurry to take the first man that asks me, neither.”

Mrs. Blondheim wrapped the forefinger of her left hand with mercerized cotton thread, and her needle flashed deftly.

“What about the little Baltimore fellow that went away yesterday?  I seen he was keepin’ you pretty busy.”

“Aw, Mrs. Blondheim, can’t a girl have a good time with a fellow without gettin’ serious?”

But she giggled in pleased self-consciousness and pushed her combs into place—­Miss Sternberger wore her hair oval about her face like Mona Lisa; her cheeks were pink-tinted, like the lining of a conch-shell.

“My Bella always says a goil can’t be too careful at these here summer resorts—­that’s why she ain’t out every night like some of these goils.  She won’t go out with a young man till she knows he comes from nice people.”

Miss Sternberger patted the back of her hand against her mouth and stifled a yawn.

“One thing I must say for my Bella—­no matter where I take that goil, everybody says what a nice, retirin’ goil she is!”

“Bella does retire rather early,” agreed Miss Sternberger in tones drippingly sweet.

“I try to make her rest up in summer,” pursued Mrs. Blondheim, unpunctured.  “You goils wear yourselves out—­nothin’ but beaus, beaus all the time.  There ain’t a night in New York that my Bella ain’t out with some young man.  I always say to her, ’Bella, the theayters ought to give you a commission.’”