advice about going to Bailey's Beach for a dip in the sea.
Potter--whose proposal it was--said that this was perhaps Providential,
as she was almost certain to want me to stay in till I could be taken
out officially. "But you don't need to know that," he added.

I looked at Sally, and she laughed; so I knew that I was to go.

"Oh, but what about bathing clothes!" I exclaimed, on a sudden thought.
"How stupid of me not to have remembered that I would want them, before
I left home, or in New York!"

"I reckon it would have been stupid of us if _we_ hadn't remembered,"
said Sally. Then she went on,--irrelevantly, it seemed at first: "What
day of the month is to-morrow?"

"The twenty-ninth of July," said Potter, promptly, while I was
resigning myself, after a slight struggle, to the fact that I had lost
track of dates.

"Seem's to me that's somebody's birthday, isn't it?" Sally appeared to
address her remark to the ceiling.

"How _did_ you know?" I exclaimed.

"A little bird told me; the kind that builds in birthday books. It
lives on a table in Lady Victoria's 'den'."

"Fancy your keeping the date in your head all this time!"

"I've a weakness for remembering birthdays--when I'm fond of the people
who own them. You see, everybody thinks about Christmas, and I don't
want to be confused with everybody, in the minds of just those special
people. Now, the truth is, I've got a little birthday present upstairs,
which I didn't mean you should see until tomorrow, but as part of it
may come in rather handy this morning, perhaps we might run up and have
a look at it."

"Oh, Sally, you dear!" I exclaimed.

"Oh, Sally, you wretch, to have kept that birthday to yourself; I want
to be on in this act," grumbled Potter. But I hardly heard him, I was
so excited about what I was going to find upstairs.

We went to my room, Sally and I; and she rang for Louise, who was told
to fetch from what Sally called her "closet" a certain black "trunk" of
whose existence Louise was evidently already aware.

It was a good-sized box, big enough to hold two or three dresses; and
when it was opened by Sally after Louise had gone, it proved to contain
three and a half.

One of the three was a blue gauze ball gown, embroidered with patterns
of thistles in tiny sparkling things that looked like diamonds; the
second was pink tulle, with garlands of tiny roses; the third was a
white linen, made as only Americans know how to make up linens; and