“I don’t believe I’ll try it,” she said. “I guess I’ve done enough for one morning. I’m getting tired, and think I’ll go ashore if Miss Noble is ready.”
Miss Noble was quite ready, and Paul went with them to the stairs and then swam back to the raft, where Clarice was still sitting. She had learned from experience that her little spurts of temper were lost on Paul, who either did not or would not notice them, and when he said to her, “You’ll take cold sitting there so long; come into the water,” she obeyed at once, and began swimming toward the shore. As they neared it and she was walking beside him she said: “Didn’t your Western friend come from Samona, and isn’t her father the Rev. Roger Hansford?”
“Yes,” Paul replied, and Clarice continued, in a low tone: “I thought so. Funny, isn’t it? She has on my old bathing suit. I sent it to Samona in a missionary box with a lot more things.”
“That accounts for its being so becoming to her,” Paul replied, shaking the water from his hair, as he went up the steps.
Clarice gave a shrug of annoyance. Her little shaft had failed to hit the mark, and she was not in a very good humor when she left him and went towards her dressing room, meeting on the way an acquaintance, who, like herself, had just left the water.
Meanwhile Elithe was divesting herself of her wet garments, and had nearly completed her toilet when Clarice and her friend passed her door, one taking the room next her own and the other the adjoining one. They were talking together, and every word they said could be distinctly heard by Elithe.
“Do you often come here?” one asked, and the other replied: “Haven’t been here before this summer, and don’t believe I’ll come again. Not a soul I know but you and Paul.”
Elithe thought she recognized the last speaker’s voice, but was not sure until the first spoke again.
“I say, Clarice, who is the pretty girl Mr. Ralston was teaching to swim?”
Elithe held her breath for the answer, which came promptly and plain.