Trouville or Ostend?"

I shook my head, sad at having to seem ungrateful. But how could I help
it?

"Well, they have this kind there, and so they do here. Everybody has
it. My prettiest one is much like yours, only it's poppy-coloured.
Katherine's is cornflower blue this year, and she's got a black one and
a lilac one. When you see all the others prancing about in the same
sort of things, you won't feel a bit funny."

I was far from sure that I should attain to such a peaceful state of
mind as not to "feel funny"; but Sally had called me a baby, and I had
to redeem myself from that aspersion at any price. So I tried to
compose my countenance over a beating heart, and think about other
things on the way to the beach, as you do if you are going to the
dentist's.

Potter went with us, though I supposed that when we came to the end, he
would bid us good-bye, and trot off to the place where the men bathed,
wherever that might be. Our things had been taken on ahead by a servant
or two, and we walked, as the day was perfect, and I was thankful to
get a little exercise.

We met a great many people whom Sally and Potter knew, and just as
Potter had said, "Here we are at Bailey's Beach," that handsome Mrs.
Pitchley and her stepdaughter, with Mr. Doremus came up. They called to
us, so we stopped to speak, and I was pleased because I'd been wanting
to know them. We were introduced, and I was wondering what Mrs. Ess Kay
would do if she could see us chatting with the Pitchleys in sight of
all Newport, when a little thin man, looking perfectly furious, with a
striped bathing suit rolled up under his arm, came hopping along
towards us, as if he were a cricket ball that somebody had batted off
the beach.

His panama hat was on the back of his head; his single eyeglass on its
chain was flying out behind him in the breeze, and my first thought was
how comical he looked. My second, as he came nearer, was something
quite different.

"Why, Mohunsleigh!" I cried.

He stopped hopping so abruptly that he stumbled, and nearly fell down.

"Hullo, Betty," he growled, hauling off his hat as if he hated the
bother of doing it. "Where did you spring from?"

"Home. Where on earth did you spring from?" I echoed.

"They've sprung me off their beastly beach," said he, glaring, and
sticking in his eyeglass. Then he almost waved his hideous little
bathing suit at me. "Wouldn't let me bathe, the bounders."

"Wouldn't let you bathe?"

"No.