Part 13 (1/2)

Laughing and breathless, they came to the bridge that led from the town to the open fields, and took the count.

”One hundred and two and a half!” shouted Penny and Genevieve triumphantly. George smiled over his wheel.

”Oh, women, women!” he said. ”One hundred and sixty-one!” said Betty.

There was a shout of protest.

”Oh, Betty Sheridan! You didn't! Why, we didn't miss _one_!”

”I wasn't counting candy stores,” smiled Betty. ”Just to be different, I counted cigar stores and saloons. But it doesn't signify much either way, does it, George?”

CHAPTER VI. BY HENRY KITCh.e.l.l WEBSTER

Of the quartette who, an hour later, emerged from the bath-houses and scampered across the satiny beech into a discreetly playful surf, Genevieve was the one real swimmer. She was better even than Penny, and she left Betty and George nowhere.

She had an endless repertory of amphibious stunts which she performed with gusto, and in the intervals she took an equal satisfaction in watching Penny's heroic but generally disastrous attempts to imitate them.

The other two splashed around aimlessly and now and then remonstrated.

Now, it's all very well to talk about two hearts beating as one, and in the accepted poetical sense of the words, of course Genevieve's and George's did. But as a matter of physiological fact, they didn't. At the end of twenty minutes or so George began turning a delicate blue and a clatter as of distant castanets provided an obligato when he spoke, the same being performed by George's teeth.

The person who made these observations was Betty.

”You'd better go out,” she said. ”You're freezing.”

It ought to have been Genevieve who said it, of course, though the fact that she was under water more than half the time might be advanced as her excuse for failing to say it. But who could venture to excuse the downright callous way in which she exclaimed, ”Already? Why we've just got in! Come along and dive through that wave. That'll warm you up!”

It was plain to George that she didn't care whether he was cold or not.

And, though the idea wouldn't quite go into words, it was also clear to him that an ideal wife--a really womanly wife--would have turned blue just a little before he began to.

”Thanks,” he said, in a cold blue voice that matched the color of his finger nails. ”I think I've had enough.”

Betty came splas.h.i.+ng along beside him.

”I'm going out, too,” she said. ”We'll leave these porpoises to their innocent play.”

This was almost pure amiability, because she wasn't cold, and she'd been having a pretty good time. Her other (practically negligible) motive was that Penny might be reminded, by her withdrawal, of his forgotten promise to teach her to float--and be sorry. Altogether, George would have been showing only a natural and reasonable sense of his obligations if he'd brightened up and flirted with her a little, instead of glooming out to sea the way he did, paying simply no attention to her at all. So at last she p.r.i.c.ked him.

”Isn't it funny,” she said, ”the really blighting contempt that swimmers feel for people who can't feel at home in the water--people who gasp and s.h.i.+ver and keep their heads dry?”

She could see that, in one way, this remark had done George good. It helped warm him up. Leaning back on her hands, as she did, she could see the red come up the back of his neck and spread into his ears. But it didn't make him conversationally any more exciting. He merely grunted.

So she tried again.

”I suppose,” she said dreamily, ”that the myth about mermaids must be founded in fact. Or is it sirens I'm thinking about? Perfectly fascinating, irresistible women, who lure men farther and farther out, in the hope of a kiss or something, until they get exhausted and drown.

I'll really be glad when Penny gets back alive.”

”And I shall be very glad,” said George, trying hard for a tone of condescending indifference appropriate for use with one who has played dolls with one's little sister, ”I shall really be very glad when you make up your mind what you are going to do with Penny. He's just about a total loss down at the office as it is, and he's getting a worse idiot from day to day. And the worst of it is, I imagine you know all the while what you're going to do about it--whether you're going to take him or not.”

The girl flushed at that. He was being almost too outrageously rude, even for George. But before she said anything to that effect, she thought of something better.