'm--there now! Feels most like summer, don't it?"

"But it doesn't _look_ like it!" smiled Miss Heth, and glanced about at
the emptiness of things.

"You'd ought to of seen her afore the hot spell," replied Mr. Wedge,
with artificial hilarity....

Then the light air took the little sail and Carlisle slid away with the
sunshine on her hair.

For half a week the breath of summer had confounded October, mid-autumn
plucking a leaf from July's best book. Now, with the half-holiday at
hand and a Sabbath to follow, a few others beside the Heths and the
Willie Kerr select party had deemed it worth while to go down to the sea
where the breezes blow. Only a few, though: the desolate quiet of a
summer place out of season yet clung and hung over all. In a solitary
corner of the vast piazza four coatless men sat idly drinking the
rickeys of summer. These, indeed, watched the embarkation of the girl
with interest, and when she stood a moment to get a knot out of the
sheet, revealing the figure of the Huntswoman (though she was by no
means one of your great Amazons), one of them might have been heard
to say:

"Well, she can have _me_ any time.... And, by crackey, she can _sail_!"

The remark betrayed the hypnotic influence: for she really could not
sail very well. No athlete this lady; she had even let her saddle-horse
go after the purchase of the second car; the sail now stood as her sole
sporting activity, and that but lately taken up. However, she handled
her bark with a tolerable efficiency. Keeping prudently inshore, yet
feeling delightfully venturesome, she skimmed along by the row of
shut-up cottages, and was soon lost to the stare of the rickey-drinkers,
of whose interest she had been quite unaware, or, let us say,
practically unaware....

Not for the eyes of anonymous transients or liberal-minded drummers had
Carlisle Heth donned this charming boat-dress and put out upon the
bounding blue. Not just to break the tedium of the afternoon, either;
not even exclusively for the vast exhilaration of sailing, though
undoubtedly she thrilled to that. But the interesting coincidence,
giving a peculiar point to it all, was that the three o'clock train from
town was due within the half-hour, and her present course lay dead
across the line of the street from the station.

Travel-worn young men; desolate Beach; chagrin at coming; and then,
presto, upon the jaded vision:--blue, sunny water, white-sailed boat,
beautiful nymph. Grea