eartiness of hand-shake. Only after a rapid mental calculation
could I account for her.

"I must warn you, she's in a great rage this morning," said her father.
"Do try to soothe her." She blushed, laughed, and bade her father not
be so silly. I asked her the cause of her great rage. She said:

"He only means I was disappointed. And he was just as disappointed as
I was. WEREN'T you, now, Father?"

"I suppose they meant well, Peggy," he laughed.

"They were QUITE right," said Mrs. Pethel, evidently not for the first
time.

"They," as I presently learned, were the authorities of the
bathing-establishment. Pethel had promised his daughter he would take
her for a swim; but on their arrival at the bathing-cabins they were
ruthlessly told that bathing was defendu a cause du mauvais temps.
This embargo was our theme as we sat down to luncheon. Miss Peggy was
of opinion that the French were cowards. I pleaded for them that even
in English watering-places bathing was forbidden when the sea was VERY
rough. She did not admit that the sea was very rough to-day. Besides,
she appealed to me, where was the fun of swimming in absolutely calm
water? I dared not say that this was the only sort of water I liked to
swim in.

"They were QUITE right," said Mrs. Pethel again.

"Yes, but, darling Mother, you can't swim. Father and I are both
splendid swimmers."

To gloss over the mother's disability, I looked brightly at Pethel, as
though in ardent recognition of his prowess among waves. With a
movement of his head he indicated his daughter--indicated that there
was no one like her in the whole world. I beamed agreement. Indeed, I
did think her rather nice. If one liked the father (and I liked Pethel
all the more in that capacity), one couldn't help liking the daughter,
the two were so absurdly alike. Whenever he was looking at her (and it
was seldom that he looked away from her), the effect, if you cared to
be fantastic, was that of a very vain man before a mirror. It might
have occurred to me that, if there was any mystery in him, I could
solve it through her. But, in point of fact, I had forgotten all about
that possible mystery. The amateur detective was lost in the
sympathetic observer of a father's love. That Pethel did love his
daughter I have never doubted. One passion is not less true because
another predominates. No one who ever saw that father with that
daughter could doubt that he loved her intense