They walked the beach up and down, she leaning heavier and heavier on his arm at each turn. Then they sat down on the sand with their faces to the sea, and held the umbrella so as to shade off the people on the bank--they didn't care for the sun a bit--and in that condition they sat and talked and talked and talked.

By and by he got up from the sand. She lifted her eyes with a pitiful look of helplessness. He reached out his hand, and she rose to it gracefully, like a trout to a fly. The hand clung to his more than a minute after she got up--the sand was so uneven, you see. The stranger bore this with Christian fort.i.tude, and really seemed as if he rather liked it. In fact, he encouraged her to hold on; and she did, with her sweet widowed face lifted to his just long enough to set his heart off like a windmill, when she dropped it again.

When they came up the flight of wooden steps that leads down from the bank, both her white hands were clasped over his arm as loving as the soft paws of a kitten, and he looked like a fellow that had been out shooting doves, and had come in with his net full.

They went in to lunch, and ate spring chickens; then they ended off with silly-bubs, which is a sweet froth that melts to nothing on the tongue--delicious, but not exactly hearty food.

Two hours after lunch, the stranger asked the widow to ride out with him; which she did, in the puffiest and silkiest of dresses, and with a lace parasol, lined with pink, between her and the sun. This was one of her snares, for she depended on that pink lining for her blushes, having left them a good way behind her somewhere about the first wedding.

The drive was paradisical. They talked, they smiled, they said the loveliest little things to each other with delicious reciprocity. He drove, and divided his manly attentions between her and the horses, giving her a generous share, which was creditable to him as a man.

It was nearly twelve o'clock that night when those two people went up to their neglected couches--nothing but a widow would have stood the shock of such impropriety among the critical of her s.e.x; but she didn't care a mite.

Early the next morning, which was Sunday, these two persons were seen coming out of the little cubby-houses under the beach in the queerest sort of dresses--I cannot describe them, because, up to this time, beach flirtations have been forbidden subjects with me.

But they came out on the beach, clasped hands, and walked right into the biggest waves they could find.

What she said to him there I cannot tell, but by and by they came back to the hotel, the sneakiest-looking creatures you ever set your two eyes on.

I don't know when it was that she brought him to the point, but the widow had netted him so close that he didn't even try to flounder.

That night there was sacred music in the hotel parlor, and, somehow, a minister of the Gospel dropped in, with a white cravat on, and waited for something, looking as if b.u.t.ter wouldn't melt in his mouth.

He hadn't been there long before the strange gentleman came in with a swallow-tailed coat on, a white vest and cravat, with ball-gloves on his hands.

Hanging on to his arm was that widow, in a long, white dress, that streamed after her in windrows, and with a shower of lace falling over her.

The minister got up, and opened his book. The people hanging about hushed their talk, and in less than ten minutes a third gold ring was chucked over the other two that weighed down the widow's finger, and she walked off with number three as proud as a white peac.o.c.k.

It took this widow just two days and part of a night to spring her traps and draw her hooks--but, then, she was a widow.

Sisters, there is a good deal of commotion in our hotel just now. Rural single ladies talk of going over to the other place.

I had a little hankering in that direction at first, but, come to think it over, mean to stay where I am. It isn't the house that has done this, but the bland atmosphere of Long Branch. If that sort of thing is indigenous to the place--and I mean to test it thoroughly--Russia is welcome to the Grand Duke; a whole-souled American is good enough for me. Besides, Russia is an awful cold place, and I don't think I ever could bring myself to eat cabbage-soup or the roe of a sturgeon.

Sisters, if this sort of thing lies in the atmosphere, don't you think it would be a good thing for the whole Society to come down here next summer? A generous diffusion of masculine energy into the course might be a desirable change. For my part, I don't mean to leave this place till frost comes. I believe this thing is going to be an epidemic at the Branch, and when contagions rage I am sure to catch any disease that is going. I have had the measles twice, and two pretty severe tugs with the scarlet-fever. In fact, I was celebrated, as a child, for catching double. One thing is certain--I never ran away because a disease was catching, and I'm not going to do it here. On the contrary, I am making over one of my old alpaca skirts into a bathing-dress. If I know myself I shall fight it out on that line, if it takes all winter.

CHAPTER XC.

THE YELLOW FLAG.

Dear sisters:--I have gone and done it! Now let me give you a little wholesome advice. It comes out of my superior knowledge of the world, and experience of the human heart. Never say that you won't do a thing, because if you do, just as sure as you live it is the very thing that you are sure to plunge into, whether you want to or not. Besides, people who know enough to doubt themselves, understand that men and women are made up princ.i.p.ally of human nature. Now human nature is a great fraud, and isn't to be trusted when he's found in the interior of your own heart, or anywhere else.

In one of my reports, I expressed myself as shocked out of a year's growth, when I heard about gentlemen and ladies going into the salt-sea waves together, and submerging themselves like mermaids in the swell and foam of the ocean. I said, in the heat and glow of modest feminine shrinkitiveness, that nothing on earth, or in the water, should induce me to do it; but circ.u.mstances alter cases, and the capacity of eternal change is the essence of genius, which is always making new combinations and discarding old prejudices.

I say it with reluctance, but truth demands frankness. Sometimes I am a little hasty in my conclusions.

Have I said enough--need I go on to explain that the result of a thing proves its propriety?

Now, bathing in company, in the abstract, does seem--well, peculiar. I might add other words which at one time came uppermost in my mind; but, looking toward results, I feel constrained to say nothing on the social aspect of mult.i.tudinous ablutions, but go into the high moral question which has slowly presented itself to my understanding.

Isn't there a pa.s.sage of Scripture somewhere that speaks about "fishers of men"? I think there is, and I am inclined to see that kind of business from a high moral stand-point. If men are to be legally caught with a dripping dress and an old straw hat for bait, who shall say that the thing is wrong? If men are told to go down to the sea in ships, what should prevent a female woman from going down in a four-cornered straw hat, a flannel tunic, and--well, pantalettes on? Everything depends on the point of view from which one sees a thing.

As a marine picture, salt-sea waves rushing in upon a sandy beach can hardly be considered complete without throwing a little life into the foreground; but when that life is composed of a flock of old straw hats, and a lot of staggery, blinded, dripping people under them, I can't say that I hanker after this particular marine view.

From an artistic stand-point then I reject the whole subject; but as the means of catching a heart afloat, that same picture offers numerous facilities.

Well, sisters, as a social inst.i.tution I no longer sneer at sea-bath flirtations. When two days of them end in matrimony, it isn't worth while to fight out the question on that line any longer. I give in.

Such engagements may be unstable as water, but a damp engagement is better than none at all.

With these sentiments, I finished off my bathing-dress, and put a red ribbon over a high-crowned, square-brimmed hat, coa.r.s.e and clumsy, which was to keep my face from the sun, and my flowing tresses from the briny ocean waves.

Early in the morning I went out into the veranda, and took a survey of the ocean--the broad infinite expanse of waters into which I was about to plunge in search of--well, health.

In front of the veranda, on the high bank, was a pole, like the liberty-poles we run up on almost every village green of New England. On that pole a pale yellow flag was flying.

A chill ran over me, and I know that my arms must have been roughened like a grater.

"The yellow-fever." I knew it was in the harbor, shut up there by the authorities. Had it escaped through Sandy Hook, and come poisoning the waters along sh.o.r.e? Now that I was ready for the first plunge, were my best hopes to be frustrated? Had I sat up all night sewing red braid on that tunic, and those--well, Turkish pantalettes, for nothing? Had I conquered a great New England prejudice, to be conquered myself by careless health officers? Why hadn't they taken an example by some of the old stock, and divided the whole thing among them in perquisites? I only wish they had.

Sisters, it was a keen disappointment. I was looking at that yellow flag, with tears in my eyes, when Cousin E. E. came on to the veranda.

"Come, Phmie," says she, bright as a May morning, "where is the new bathing-dress? It will be splendid bathing!"

I looked at her, I looked at the ocean and at the path that led down to the beach, along which half a dozen real nice-looking gentlemen were picking their steps like rabbits toward a sweet-apple trap. It was tantalizing.

"Yes," says she, as contented as a lamb, "it will be lovely bathing this morning; I mean to try it."

"Try it," says I; "haven't you read that yellow-fever is in the harbor?"

"Well, what then?" says she. "It won't hurt us."

"Won't hurt us," says I. "Did you ever hear of poison getting into water that could be washed out? No, if it is in the harbor, some of it will drift down here. Look, you can see it sweltering in the waves now."

She looked out on the ocean, where a faint yellow tinge rippled and shone with treacherous temptatiousness.

"Oh, that is only the sunshine," says she.

"But the fever," says I, "I know it is in the harbor, for the newspapers said so. They have run up the yellow flag wherever it is to be found.

See there."

Cousin E. E. sat down and dropped both hands in her lap.

"Cousin Phmie," says she, "I really don't know whether you are a real genius or the greatest goose that ever lived. You are just a puzzle to me. Who ever heard of yellow-fever in the water?"