"Don't you know what they mean, Eddie?"
"Sure I do!" He leaned toward her and placed his hand lightly over hers.
"T.B.—True Blue—that's what they mean, little lady."
She could feel the veins in his palm throbbing.
SUMMER RESOURCES
At seven o'clock the Seaside Hotel struggled into full dress—ladies emerged from siestas and curlpapers, dowagers wormed into straight fronts and spread the spousal vestments of boiled shirt, U-shaped waistcoat et al. across the bed. Slim young men in the swelter of their inside two-fifty-a-day rooms carefully extracted their braided-at-the-seams trousers from beneath the mattresses and removed trees from patent-leather pumps.
At seven-thirty young girls fluttered in and out from the dining-room like brilliant night moths, the straight-front dowagers, U-vested spouses, and slim young men in braided trousers seams crowded about the desk for the influx of mail, and read their tailor and modiste duns with the rapt and misleading expression that suggested a love rune rather than a "Please remit." Interested mothers elbowed for the most desirable veranda rockers; the blather of voices, the emph-umph-umph of the three-nights-a-week orchestra and the remote pound of the ocean joined in united effort.
At eight o'clock Miss Myra Sternberger yawned in her wicker rocker and raised two round and bare-to-the-elbow arms high above her head.
"Gee!" she said. "This place is so slow it gets on my nerves—it does!"
Mrs. Blondheim, who carried toast away from the breakfast-table concealed beneath a napkin for her daughter who remained abed until noon, paused in her Irish crochet, spread a lace wheel upon her ample knee, and regarded it approvingly.
"What you got to kick about, Miss Sternberger? Didn't I see you in the surf this morning with that shirtwaist drummer from Cincinnati?"