"We might try the pool-rooms," suggested the chauffeur.
Percival looked at him blankly, then he remembered.
"Take me to a hat shop," he said peremptorily.
When they arrived at Waikiki Beach he got out of the motor with more alacrity than was habitual to him, and entered the cocoanut-grove. By Jove! he thought, it was not a bad sight to see the palms dangling over the beach like that, with the jolly breakers rolling in, and the bay full of changing colors. Coral reefs! That's what caused the color; he had read it in a book somewhere. Air was good, too, fruity and salty and not too hot. For the moment he forgot his cares; he even forgot that his new hat was one of those peculiar shapes which Englishmen often pore over in the advertising pages of American magazines for the sole purpose of enjoying a sense of superb and vast superiority.
As he scanned the beach his eye was caught by three ladies and three natives standing about a surf-boat in animated discussion. The youngest of the ladies, who wore a bathing-suit of conspicuous hue and did most of the talking, suddenly detached herself from the others and came flying across the sand toward him.
"Mr. Hascombe!" she demanded breathlessly, "you'll take me out in the surf-boat, won't you? The boys haven't come, and Mrs. Weston is afraid for me to go alone."
"Mr. Hascombe!" she demanded breathlessly, "you'll take me out in the surf-boat, won't you?"
"But my dear young lady, it's quite impossible. I'm looking for the purser. They say he's going to put—"