m.

"There! You made me swallow my gum! And I'll bet you call yourself a
gentleman!"

Sara, red-faced but grinning, took a mighty step upward, gripped the
woman firmly around the waist and lifted her down the opposite side of
the stile. Pen and Jim followed with a mad scramble. For a moment it
looked as if the red-headed woman would murder Sara. But as she looked
at his young beauty her middle-aged face was etched by a gold-toothed
smile.

"Gee, that's more fun than I've had for a year!" she exclaimed and she
melted into helpless laughter.

Coney Island is of no value to the fastidious or the lazy. Coney Island
belongs to those who have the invaluable gift of knowing how to be
foolish, who have felt the soul-purging quality of huge laughter, the
revivifying power of play. Lawyers and pickpockets, speculators and
laborers, poets and butchers, chorus girls and housewives at Coney
Island find one common level in laughter. Every wholesome human being
loves the clown.

Spent with laughing, Pen finally suggested lunch, and Jim led the way to
an open-air restaurant.

"Let's," he said with an air of inspiration, "eat lunch backward. Begin
with coffee and cheese and ice cream and pie and end with clam chowder
and pickles."

"Nothing could be more perfect!" exclaimed Pen enthusiastically, and as
nothing surprises a Coney Islander waiter, they reversed the menu.

When they could hold no more, they strolled down to the beach and sat in
the sand. The crowd was very thick here. Nearly everyone was in a
bathing suit. Women lolled, half-naked in the sand, while their escorts,
still more scantily clad, sifted sand over them. Unabashed couples
embraced each other, rubbing elbows with other embracing pairs. The wind
blew the smell of hot, wet humans across Jim's face. He looked at Pen's
sweet face, now a little round-eyed and abashed in watching the
unashamed crowd. It was the first time that Mrs. Manning had allowed Pen
to go to Coney Island without her careful eye.

Jim said, with a slow red coming into his cheeks, "Let's get out of
here, Sara."

"Why, we just got here," replied Sara. "Let's get into our suits and
have some fun."

"Pen'll not get into a bathing suit with these muckers," answered Jim,
slowly.

Pen, who had been thinking the same thing, immediately resented Jim's
tone. "Of course I shall," she replied airily. "You can't boss me, Jim."

"That's right, Pen," agreed Sara. "Let old Prunes sit here and swelte