ke her into her
high-colored and energetic self. There was nothing especially reviving
in the Wisconsin lakes, to which (placid inland ponds) they had confined
their previous summer sojourns: and the vogue of the fresher resorts
farther north on the greater lakes had not yet reached them. This year
let the salt surf roll and the salt winds blow.

My wife and I, in our Eastern peregrinations, passed a few days at the
particular beach frequented by the two mothers. We really found in Mrs.
Johnny's aspect and carriage some justification for the incredible
legend of her poor health. She walked with less vigor than formerly and
was glad to sit down more frequently; and once or twice we saw her
taking the air at her bedroom window instead of on the broad walk before
the shops. Her boys played robustly on the sands, and would play with
Albert--or rather, let him play with them--if urged to. But, like most
twins, they were self-sufficing; besides, they were several years older.
To produce the full effect of team-work between the families required
some perseverance and a bit of manoeuvring. The little girl was hardly
two.

Gertrude and her mother welcomed us rather emphatically--too
emphatically, we felt. The latter offered us politic lunches in the
large dining-room of their hotel, and laid great stress upon our
_provenance_ when we met her friends on the promenade. We seemed to be
becoming a part of a general plan of campaign--pawns on the board. This
shortened our stay.

The day before we left, Johnny McComas himself appeared. He had found a
way to leave his widely ramifying interests for a few odd hours. A man
of the right temperament gains greatly by a temporary estival
transplantation; and if Johnny always contrived to seem dominant and
prosperous at home, he now seemed lordly and triumphant abroad. He
"dressed the part": he was almost as over-appropriately inappropriate as
little Albert himself. He played ostentatiously with his boys on the
sands, and did not mind Albert as one of their eye-drawing party. He,
whether his wife did or no, responded fully and immediately to the salt
waves and the salt winds.

"Immense! isn't it?" he said to me, throwing out his chest to the breeze
and teetering in his white shoes, out of sheer abundance of vitality, on
the planks beneath him.

There was only one drawback: his wife was really not well. And he
wondered audibly to me, while my own wife was having a few words near by
with