“A very fine animal, Alice; she is a very beautiful woman, although I fancy you are right about her not being quite—quite the thing. The less notice you take of such people the better, my dear, unless you know something about who and what they are.”
“That old boy,” remarked Dick to Lola, looking after the couple who had just passed them, “is Howard Bradley, of Detroit, one of the biggest lumbermen in the country, said to be worth eight or ten millions.”
“Really?” She looked up with a quick flash of interest.
“Yes, that’s his daughter, Alice Bradley; you must have often seen her picture in the Sunday papers. She’s a real swell; they are friends of my old man’s, although I’ve never met ’em myself.”
“You are a foolish boy, Dick. You must go and introduce yourself at once! It’s silly not to make friends of that sort when you can.”
“But I can’t be bothered.”
“Now, Dick, you do as I tell you. I’d like to meet a girl like that myself. You could introduce me easily enough.”
“All right, Lola,” replied Dick indifferently. “I’m even ready to butt into society if you think it will amuse you, but right now let’s go for a swim. Bob and Madge will be waiting for us.”
The beach was crowded when they entered the water together a little later, and as Lola was the only one of the four who ever did any real swimming, she left the others without ceremony and struck out for the raft, which, as it was now high tide, was quite a distance from the shore.
“Careful, Lola!” Dick called out to her anxiously, but she only turned her head and laughed at him as she swam easily along with an over-hand stroke that sent her through the water without the slightest apparent effort. In a moment she was past the line of bobbing heads that marked the limit of the average bather’s courage and in comparatively clear water; another moment and she was within a few strokes of the raft on which a half dozen men and one woman were standing; one of the men she saw was the gentleman Dick had told her was Howard Bradley; the girl was his daughter.