"What have you in your head, Tom?"
"Refreshment."
"You've just come from the sea."
"I've just come from the sea where it was fashionable. Now I'll find some place where it is unfashionable. I don't favour Saratoga any more than you do. It's a jolly stupid; that's what it is."
"But where do you want to go, Tom? you have some place in your head."
"I'd as lief go off for the Isles of Shoals as anywhere," said Tom, lying down again. "They haven't got fashionable yet. I've a notion to see 'em first."
"I doubt about that," remarked Philip gravely. "I am not sure but the
Isles of Shoals are about the most distinguished place you could go to."
"Isles of Shoals. Where are they? and what are they?" Julia asked.
"A few little piles of rock out in the Atlantic, on which it spends its wrath all the year round; but of course the ocean is not always raging; and when it is not raging, it smiles; and they say the smile is nowhere more bewitching than at the Isles of Shoals," Philip answered.
"But will nobody be there?"