ish suit
with a cane attached walking about."

"Well, bless my soul," commented Cowperwood, "what an indictment!"

"It's true," she replied. "He knows nothing at all except polo, and
the latest swimming-stroke, and where everybody is, and who is going to
marry who. Isn't it dull?"

She tossed her head back and breathed as though to exhale the fumes of
the dull and the inane from her inmost being.

"Did you tell him that?" inquired Cowperwood, curiously.

"Certainly I did."

"I don't wonder he looks so solemn," he said, turning and looking back
at Greanelle and Mrs. Carter; they were sitting side by side in
sand-chairs, the former beating the sand with his toes. "You're a
curious girl, Berenice," he went on, familiarly. "You are so direct
and vital at times.

"Not any more than you are, from all I can hear," she replied, fixing
him with those steady eyes. "Anyhow, why should I be bored? He is so
dull. He follows me around out here all the time, and I don't want
him."

She tossed her head and began to run up the beach to where bathers were
fewer and fewer, looking back at Cowperwood as if to say, "Why don't
you follow?" He developed a burst of enthusiasm and ran quite briskly,
overtaking her near some shallows where, because of a sandbar offshore,
the waters were thin and bright.

"Oh, look!" exclaimed Berenice, when he came up. "See, the fish! O-oh!"

She dashed in to where a few feet offshore a small school of minnows as
large as sardines were playing, silvery in the sun. She ran as she had
for the bird, doing her best to frighten them into a neighboring pocket
or pool farther up on the shore. Cowperwood, as gay as a boy of ten,
joined in the chase. He raced after them briskly, losing one school,
but pocketing another a little farther on and calling to her to come.

"Oh!" exclaimed Berenice at one point. "Here they are now. Come
quick! Drive them in here!"

Her hair was blowy, her face a keen pink, her eyes an electric blue by
contrast. She was bending low over the water--Cowperwood also--their
hands outstretched, the fish, some five in all, nervously dancing
before them in their efforts to escape. All at once, having forced
them into a corner, they dived; Berenice actually caught one.
Cowperwood missed by a fraction, but drove the fish she did catch into
her hands.

"Oh," she exclaimed, jumping up, "how wonderful! It's alive. I caught
it."

She danced up and down, and Cowperwood, stand