have to go through. What good does
it do to fuss over things we can't help?'

"'That's right, dear,' said her companion, 'and it doesn't pay to look
far ahead, either, if one wants to be happy. I never do.'

"They were pretty and quite well dressed, these two maidens. As to their
being without a male escort, I rather admired their sturdy independence.
Everything about them bespoke refinement, and yet the very next remark
from the girl called Ruby sent a shiver through my sensitive frame, and
caused my hastily formed but favorable opinion of the pair to change
color.

"'I'd give anything, Pearl, if Will and the other fellows were here.
They always buy, and I've got an awful thirst on me.'

"'We might have some beer, anyway,' mildly suggested Pearl, and a flying
waiter took the order.

"'I guess we can pick up something on the boat,' remarked Ruby; who, by
the way, was good to look at--a black-eyed lass with regular features
and lots of pink and white complexion. Pearl, languidly sipping her
beer, nodded in the affirmative. This person, evidently the younger of
the two, had a babyish face, big innocent blue eyes, and a profusion of
fluffy yellow hair. She did not appeal as much to my sense of the
beautiful as the dark one did; but I have always been partial to
brunettes. She told me later that she was twenty--which figure was
enough for me to know, I suppose. Oh, I understand women. They are an
open book to me.

"About eight o'clock the moon, immense and crimson, came up from behind
the Maryland hills, and cast a lurid path upon the wavelets. The girls,
or rather the 'Jewels,' as I have since learned to think of them,
huddled closer together, with a not too capacious shawl around them, for
the wind was freshening considerably. For a while I stopped looking at
them, being interested in the little stunts that are done on the boat as
it passes Mount Vernon. The tolling of the bell and the dirge by the
band absorbed all my attention.

"It was not long, though, before I began to feel that I was the object
of very earnest scrutiny on the part of an individual or individuals
nearby. Turning suddenly, I met the basilisk gaze of Pearl and Ruby.
Their dreadful remark came to me with crushing force. They had begun, as
they coarsely put it, 'to pick up something.' Lobster-like, finding
myself in hot water, I turned several beautiful shades of red
immediately. I became terror-stricken--I, the dignified Professor of
Applied Sc