of effulgence,
"I expect to have more," she confessed.

"Oh! do you?" asked Eleanor, "I'm sorry I can't sit up with you then
and help you. You--you don't expect to be--provocated to _slap_
anybody, do you?"

"No, I don't, but as things are going I almost wish I did," Gertrude
answered, not realizing that before the evening was over there would
be one person whom she would be ruefully willing to slap several times
over.

As they turned into the village street from the beach road they met
Jimmie, who had been having his after-dinner pipe with Grandfather
Amos, with whom he had become a prime favorite. With him was
Albertina, toeing out more than ever and conversing more than
blandly.

"This virtuous child has been urging me to come after Eleanor and
remind her that it is bedtime," Jimmie said, indicating the pink
gingham clad figure at his side. "She argues that Eleanor is some six
months younger than she and ought to be in bed first, and personally
she has got to go in the next fifteen minutes."

"It's pretty hot weather to go to bed in," Albertina said. "Miss
Sturgis, if I can get my mother to let me stay up half an hour more,
will you let Eleanor stay up?"

Just beyond her friend, in the shadow of her ample back, Eleanor was
making gestures intended to convey the fact that sitting up any longer
was abhorrent to her.

"Eleanor needs her sleep to-night, I think," Gertrude answered,
professionally maternal.

"I brought Albertina so that our child might go home under convoy,
while you and I were walking on the beach," Jimmie suggested.

As the two little girls fell into step, the beginning of their
conversation drifted back to the other two, who stood watching them
for a moment.

"I thought I'd come over to see if you was willing to say you were
sorry," Albertina began. "My face stayed red in one spot for two hours
that day after you slapped me."

"I'm not sorry," Eleanor said ungraciously, "but I'll say that I am,
if you've come to make up."

"Well, we won't say any more about it then," Albertina conceded. "Are
Miss Sturgis and Mr. Sears going together, or are they just friends?"

"Isn't that Albertina one the limit?" Jimmie inquired, with a piloting
hand under Gertrude's elbow. "She told me that she and Eleanor were
mad, but she didn't want to stay mad because there was more going on
over here than there was at her house and she liked to come over."

"I'm glad Eleanor slapped her," Gertrude said; "sti