“Why do women always yell when they bathe?” asked Jim, coming in. “I knocked three times, by the way, but you didn’t hear me.”
“They don’t,” Norah said indignantly, ignoring his apology. “At least sensible ones don’t.”
“Then it’s the insensible ones that bathe,” Jim said, sticking to his point. “At least nine-tenths of the women there scream when a wave hits them—and it’s the same in any place you go to. I often wonder”—reflectively—“how they break themselves of the habit sufficiently to avoid screaming in the bathroom at home!”
“Jimmy, you are an ass,” said his sister, politely. She looked up at him with pleading. “It’s hot, and the sea looks lovely; I won’t yell, if you’ll take me to bathe.”
“That’s what I came for,” Jim answered. “Dad is deep in the last three weeks’ papers, and Wally and I are pining for a swim. Come on!” They plunged downstairs, found Wally awaiting them on the verandah, and hurried down the terrace to the sea; and in five minutes Norah was having her first taste of surfing, getting knocked flat by waves and buried temporarily beneath what seemed thousands of tons of water, coming up to the surface, breathless, but happy, and swimming wildly until another breaker came over her; and learning in a very short time to meet them and make use of them, diving through their green curves and coming gloriously ashore upon their hollow backs. They stayed until the sun left the sky, and the water grew chilly; then, damp and hilarious, and exceedingly hungry, climbed up to the hotel.
Mr. Linton was standing on the verandah, looking out.
“I’m glad to see you,” he said; “you were so long that I’ve been mentally recalling the treatment of the apparently drowned. Had a good bathe?”
“Oh, glorious!” said the bathers. “Is it time for dinner?”
Ten minutes later they were enjoying it in a big dining-room that was open on one side to the verandah, and to the darkening sea. Lights began to flash out all round the semicircle of the pier, and along the terraces—though the waiter, a bare-footed Indian in white clothes, told them regretfully that since the war the fountains no longer were red and green at night, but were turned off when dusk fell!
“It seems a rum tribute to war,” Wally said. “But I suppose it’s all right.”