“Or the man in it,” muttered Olive.
“No; that’s ungenerous to your sisters,” said Eleanor.
“Why demand generosity?” Olive retorted. “We are all in the same trade.” And she smiled audaciously at Herbert. “Even Mrs. Verder didn’t take up with this movement till she lost her husband, and I’ll wager this Ruth Bailey is an old maid.”
“Ruth Hailey,” corrected Matthew, flushing painfully, he scarcely knew why, perhaps from sympathy with the aspersed friend of his childhood. “She is unmarried, but I am quite sure it must be from her own choice, for she is very pretty.”
“You said she wasn’t,” said Mrs. Wyndwood, quickly.
He laughed confusedly. “I was thinking of the girl.”
The subject dropped.
Ere they got in the wind freshened and Matthew was busy with the sheet. And now a proposition was broached which promised to bring a new sensation into their comparatively sequestered existence. Light-hearted discussions as to what they would do in the event of capsizing through Matthew’s mishandling of the sail led to estimates of the distance they could swim in their clothes. Mrs. Wyndwood could not swim at all, and complained of the abrupt shelving of the beach, which gave her only a few feet of splashing room, while Olive was sailing gloriously off in search of the horizon. Herbert said that, like the man who was asked if he could play the violin, he didn’t know if he could swim in his clothes, because he had never tried, and, besides, he had his comedy in his pocket, which was heavy enough to drag down a theatre. Olive said she didn’t see that it made any difference whether a lady swam in her clothes or not, especially if she was in evening dress. She claimed that the cap and gown worn in the water were as heavy as men’s boating flannels.
The upshot of the discussion was that Miss Regan challenged Mr. Matthew Strang to a race in clothes, which, she insisted, must be new. “You don’t go out getting capsized in old clothes,” she contended. “Boots you needn’t have, nor a coat; people always have time to throw them off—in books. I shall be clothed in a new yachting costume, superficially, of course, to counteract your sheddings from above.”
“What waste!” remonstrated Eleanor.