companion was more of a
Diana. Both were neatly habited in plain travelling-dresses and cloaks
of black and white plaid, and both seemed utterly unconscious of the
battery of eyes and eye-glasses that enfiladed them from the whole
length of the piazza as they passed.

"Who are they?" asked Salsbury; "I don't know them."

"Nor I," said Burnham; "but they look like people to know. They must be
somebody."

Half an hour later the hotel-office was besieged by a score of young
men, all anxious for a peep at the last names upon the register. It is
needless to say that our friends were not in the crowd. Ned Salsbury was
no more the man to exhibit curiosity than Charley Burnham was the man
to join in a scramble for anything under the sun. They had educated
their emotions clear down, out of sight, and piled upon them a mountain
of well-bred inertia.

But, somehow or other, these fellows who take no trouble are always the
first to gain the end. A special Providence seems to aid the poor,
helpless creatures. So, while the crowd still pressed at the
office-desk, Jerry Swayne, the head clerk, happened to pass directly by
the piazza where the inert ones sat, and, raising a comical eye, saluted
them.

"Heavy arrivals to-night. See the turnout?"

"Y-e-s," murmured Ned.

"Old Chapman and family. His daughter drove the pony-phaeton, with her
friend, a Miss Thurston. Regular nobby ones. Chapman's the steam-ship
man, you know. Worth thousands of millions! I'd like to be connected
with his family--by marriage, say!"--and Jerry went off, rubbing his
cropped head and smiling all over, as was his wont.

"I know who they are now," said Charley. "Met a cousin of theirs, Joe
Faulkner, abroad two years ago. Dooced fine fellow. Army."

The manly art of wagoning is not pursued vigorously at Brant Beach. The
roads are too heavy back from the water, and the drive is confined to a
narrow strip of wet sand along the shore; so carriages are few, and the
pony-chaise became a distinguished element at once. Salsbury and Burnham
whirled past it in their light trotting-wagons at a furious pace, and
looked hard at the two young ladies in passing, but without eliciting
even the smallest glance from them in return.

"Confounded _distingue_-looking girls, and all that," owned Ned, "but,
aw, fearfully unconscious of a fellow!"

This condition of matters continued until the young men were actually
driven to acknowledge to each other that they should no