"Just as I am beginning to take my lovely husband and children, and my beautiful home for granted," Nancy said sensibly, giving herself a little shake. "We have too much now, and here I am wondering what it would be like to have a motor-car!"
And the next day she spoke carelessly at the club of the smaller bathhouses.
"This is a wonderful bath house of yours, Mrs. Ingram; but aren't there smaller ones?"
Mrs. Ingram, a distinguished-looking, plain woman of forty, with the pleasantest smile in the world, turned quickly from the big dressing room she had just engaged, and was inspecting.
"Yes, there are, Mrs. Bradley, they're in that little green row, right against the wall of the garages. We had to have them, you know, for the children, and a bachelor or two, who couldn't use a big one, and then of course the maids love to go in, in the mornings—my boys used one until last year, preferred it!"
And she smiled at the two tall boys in crumpled linen, who were testing the pegs and investigating the advantages of the room. Nancy had meant to be firm about that bathhouse, but she did not feel quite equal to it at this moment. She allowed her fancy to play for one delightful minute with the thought of a big dressing room; the one right next to Mrs. Ingram's, with the green awning!
"But twenty dollars a season is an outrageous rent for a bathhouse!" she said to Bert that night.
"Oh, I don't know," he said comfortably, "We've got the money. It amounts only to about five dollars a month, after all. I vote for the big one."
"Well, of course it'll be just the most glorious luxury that ever WAS," Nancy agreed happily. She loved the water, and Bert enjoyed nothing so much in the world as an hour's swimming with the children, but before that second summer was over they could not but see that their enthusiasm was unshared by the majority of their neighbours. The children all went in daily, at the stillwater, and the few young girls Marlborough Gardens boasted also went in, on Sundays, in marvellous costumes. At these times there was much picturesque grouping on the pier, and the float, and much low conversation between isolated couples, while flying soft hair was drying. Also the men of all ages went in, for perhaps ten minutes brisk overhand exercise, and came gasping out for showers and rough towelling.
But Nancy's women friends did not care for sea-bathing, and she came to feel that there was something just a trifle provincial in the open joyousness with which the five Bradleys gathered for their Sunday riot. If there was a morning tide they were comparatively unnoticed, although there were always a few boats going out, and few men on the tennis courts. But when the tide was high in the afternoon, even Bert admitted that it was "darned conspicuous" for the family to file across the vision of the women who were playing bridge on the porch, and for Anne to shriek over her water-wings and the boys to yell, as they inevitably did yell, "Gee—it's cold!"