r), I followed where
he had gone down Court Street, and his cosmopolitan figure would
have been easy to descry at any distance along that scantily peopled
pavement. He had evidently found the bank and was getting his money.

David of the yellow heir and his limpid-looking bride were on the
horrible little excursion boat, watching for me and keeping with some
difficulty a chair next themselves that I might not have to stand up all
the way; and, as I came aboard, the bride called out to me her relief,
she had made sure that I would be late.

"David said you wouldn't," she announced in her clear up-country accent
across the parasols and heads of huddled tourists, "but I told him a
gentleman that's late to three meals aivry day like as not would forget
boats can't be kept hot in the kitchen for you."

I took my place in the chair beside her as hastily as possible, for
there is nothing that I so much dislike as being made conspicuous for
any reason whatever; and my thanks to her were, I fear, less gracious in
their manner than should have been the case. Nor did she find me, I must
suppose, as companionable during this excursion--during the first part
of it, at any rate--as a limpid-looking bride, who has kept at some
pains a seat beside her for a single gentleman, has the right to expect;
the brief hours of this morning had fed my preoccupation too richly, and
I must often have fallen silent.

The horrible little tug, or ferry, or wherry, or whatever its
contemptible inconvenience makes it fitting that this unclean and
snail-like craft should be styled, cast off and began to lumber along
the edges of the town with its dense cargo of hats and parasols and
lunch parcels. We were a most extraordinary litter of man and womankind.
There was the severe New England type, improving each shining hour, and
doing it in bleak costume and with a thoroughly northeast expression;
there were pink sunbonnets from (I should imagine) Spartanburg, or
Charlotte, or Greenville; there were masculine boots which yet bore
incrusted upon their heels the red mud of Aiken or of Camden; there
was one fat, jewelled exhalation who spoke of Palm Beach with the true
stockyard twang, and looked as if she swallowed a million every morning
for breakfast, and God knows how many more for the ensuing repasts; she
was the only detestable specimen among us; sunbonnets, boots, and even
ungenial New England proved on acquaintance kindly, simple, enterprising
Amer