"You'll feel differently when you've been in Newport awhile. It's not at all the fashion to walk on the Cliffs now except on Sunday, and not at this end of them even then. A great many people won't bathe, either,—they say it has grown so common. Why, it used to be the thing to walk down here,—all the nicest people did it; and now you never see anybody below Narragansett Avenue except ladies'-maids and butlers, and people who are boarding at the hotels and don't know any better."
"How funny it seems!" remarked Candace, half to herself, with her eyes on the distance, which was rapidly closing in with mist.
"What is funny?"
"Oh, I was—I was only thinking how funny it is that there should be a fashion about coming down to such a beautiful place as this."
"I don't see how it is funny."
"Yes," persisted Candace, who, for all her shyness, had ideas and opinions of her own; "because the Cliffs are so old and have always been here, and I suppose some of the people who make it the fashion not to walk upon them have only just come to Newport."
"I really think you are the queerest girl I ever saw," said Gertrude.
A long silence ensued. Each of the two girls was thinking her own thoughts. The thickening on the horizon meanwhile was increasing. Thin films of vapor began to blow across the sky. The wind stirred and grew chill; the surf on the beach broke with a low roar which had a menacing sound. Suddenly a wall of mist rose and rolled rapidly inland, blotting out all the blue and the smile of sky and sea.
"Gracious! here's the fog," cried Gertrude, "and I do believe it's going to rain. We must hurry home. I rather think mamma's storm is coming, after all."