e, perhaps," suggested Eline Carleton, a visitor from
Chicago. "I love to guess riddles! Say it again, Jack, do!"

"Why is a raindrop----" began Norton Randolf, a newcomer in Chelton. "The
answer is----"

"That you can bring water to a horse, even if you can't make him stand
still without hitching," interrupted Walter. "Go on, Jack!"

"I don't see much use in going on, if you fellows--and I beg your
collective pardons--the ladies also--are to interrupt me all the while."

"That's so--let's play the game fair," suggested Eline. "Is it a riddle,
Jack? Belle is afraid of the water because--let me see--because it can't
spoil her complexion no matter whether it's salt or fresh--is that it?"
and she glanced over at the slightly pouting Belle, whose rosy complexion
was often the envy of less happily endowed girls.

"I'm not afraid of the water!" declared Belle. "I don't see why he says
so, anyhow. It--it isn't--kind."

"Forgive me, Belle!" and Jack "slumped" from his chair to his knees
before the offended one. "I do beg your pardon, but you know that ever
since we proposed this auto trip to Sandy Point Cove you've hung back on
some pretext or other. You've even tried to get us to consent to a land
trip. But, in the language of the immortal Mr. Shakespeare, there is
nothing doing. We are going to the coast."

"Of course I'm coming, too," said Belle. "Stop it, Jack!" she commanded,
drawing her plump hand away from his brown palm. "Behave yourself! Only,"
she went on, as the others ceased laughing, "only sometimes the ocean
seems so--so----"

"Oceany," supplied Walter.

"Now Jack--and you other boys also," said Cora in firm tones, "really
it isn't fair. Belle is nervous about water, just as the rest of us are
about some other particular bugbear, but she is also reasonable, and she
has even promised to learn to swim."

Cora brushed from the mahogany centre table a few morsels of withered
lilac petals, for, in spite of the most careful dusting and setting to
rights of the room, those blooms had a persistent way of dropping off.

"Belle swim!" cried Jack, rising to his feet, since his advances had
been repulsed, "why she would have to be done up in a barrel of life
preservers, and then she'd insist on being anchored to shore by a ship's
cable. Belle swim!"

"Indeed!" retorted his sister, "you'll soon find that the more nervous a
girl is, the more persistent she is to learn to swim. She realizes the
necessity of not los