CHAPTER II.
THE FOLLY.
About a week later Mr. Tremain found at his breakfast plate another letter, and though bearing no crest or motto, and not suggestive of violets, was nevertheless a dainty enough feminine epistle.
"The Folly,
"Staten Island,
"April, 188—."Dear Mr. Tremain,
"Will you come down to us for as long as you can stay without becoming bored to extinction! Your favourite rooms are waiting you, your favourite horse stands idle in his stall, the yacht is in perfect condition, and this delicious foretaste of summer makes sailing in her delightful. We are bored to death, however, for want of some one out of the common. Come and be that some one. I can offer you a pretty girl, a clever girl, and a girl of the period to flirt with successively; then there is myself, and your little god-daughter, Marianne, for common sense and dulness; while George, poor fellow, is pining for another battle at tennis and billiards with you. The ponies, my new ones, and their mistress, will be at the five-thirty boat to-morrow afternoon, to meet you, so pray don't disappoint,
"Yours most cordially,
"Esther Newbold."
Nothing loth, Mr. Tremain put himself on board the Castleton the next day, and enjoyed the half-hour's crossing to the island, whose wooded, picturesque shores, clad in fairest green, were a refreshment to his senses, accustomed for so many months to the hard lines and sharp angles of New York. As he stepped off the boat at New Brighton, he was at once attracted by a very small boy, in a very tall hat, top-boots, and silver buttons; then the most perfect of pony-carriages and ponies met his view; and last, but not least, a pretty little woman in a Gainsborough hat, and a light ulster, who put out a welcoming hand, in a heavy driving-glove, as he appeared, and said gaily:
"Oh, Mr. Tremain, this is very good of you. You know I said I should come for you myself. Now, then, are you quite settled to your liking? Let go their heads, Tony; go on, my beauties."
The ponies answered spiritedly to the flick of her whip; and, indeed, pranced off so suddenly that the small atom of humanity, perched up behind, quite lost his dignity, and only retained his equilibrium by super-human efforts.
Once on the Terrace they bowled along at a good pace, and after the usual questions had been asked and answered, Mr. Tremain inquired whom he was to meet at the Folly.
Mrs. Newbold answered with a little laugh: "I think I told you in my letter of the three varieties of graces—a specimen of each—I have prepared for you? Here they are by name, and ticketed with the attributes they pose for, and fondly imagine they possess. A clever girl from Boston of course, Rosalie James—small and dark, and critical—reads all the newest books with the most jaw-breaking names, goes in for all the 'ologies' and 'isms,' the later the better; likes to think herself a disciple of the most advanced agnostic cult, is nothing if not cultured, and pins her artistic canons to those of Burne Jones and Walter Crane; is a working member of the Sorosis Club, the Nineteenth Century, and every other woman's club in the Union; writes for the magazines, and always has an æsthetic novel on the stocks, which never is launched. How do you like this style, Philip?"