"Well?"
Mac dropped his sand into her lap, and then plumped himself down by her side.
"Did you see vat funny man in ve pinky suit? Well, he's Mrs.
Benson's boy."
"Hush, dear!" Mrs. McAlister said hastily, for Mrs. Benson's awning was next her own.
"What for should I hush? He is funny; just you look at him and see."
"Mac is earning his right to a place in Dragons' Row," Hubert observed from the spot, ten feet away, where he was taking a sunbath between plunges. "Why don't you come in, mother?"
"I dare not face the critics," she answered laughingly, while she emptied Mac's sand from her lap. "I shouldn't come out of it as well as Babe does."
Hubert raised himself on his elbow and looked after his sister with evident satisfaction.
"She's the best swimmer on the beach, except Mr. Drayton," he said, as he dropped back again and burrowed his brown arms into the sand. "If he gives her many more lessons, she'll beat him at his own trade, and that's saying a good deal."
Phebe, meanwhile, had been swimming with the tide and was now far up the shore. There she landed herself through the breakers as craftily as a fisherman lands his dory, and came tramping back toward the awning onto more. Not even the deep sand could hamper her light step, as she came striding along with a perfect disregard of the buzz which passed along the line of awnings parallel with her coming.