ore looking at her watch; and when you have been in exactly twenty
minutes she tells you to come out directly, or you will catch a chill.
I've always wondered what it would do to you if you stopped in for
twenty-one minutes, though I never had the chance to try; but in
America all that is quite different, as different as the very way they
say "seaside," with their accent on the first instead of the last
syllable.

Nobody thinks about watches. You just bathe and bathe as long as you
feel like it. When you are tired of it you come out; then you bake
yourself in the sand for a little while if you like, and run back to
begin over again. It is heavenly. No other adjective half expresses it.

When we did really make up our minds to stop out for good, and had
dressed ourselves, feeling like goddesses just born of the foam (or
gods, as the case might be), we all met--our party, the Pitchleys and
my cousin,--to arrange about what Mohunsleigh would do.

It seemed that Mrs. Pitchley had invited him to lunch, and as she had
been so kind about the bathhouse, he explained to Potter, he thought
that he couldn't very well refuse. About stopping on, he would decide
later; but he consented to drive with us in the afternoon, in a motor
car of Potter's that holds six. By that time, he would have had time to
send a wire to a friend of his in New York, and to make up his mind
what he had better do about going back.

When we got home, we found Mrs. Ess Kay much better, and up. She was
inclined at first to be cross with Sally and Potter for taking me to
the beach; but when she heard about Mohunsleigh, she forgot to be
vexed, and seemed almost excited about him, I can't think why.

She asked lots of questions, very quickly, one after the other,
brightening up when Potter told how he had invited Mohunsleigh to come
to The Moorings, but looking quite strained and wild at the news about
his lunching with the Pitchleys.

"You _oughtn't_ to have let him go, Potter," she said.

Potter shrugged his shoulders--those square American shoulders of his.
"Strange as it may seem to you, he wanted to. That settled it. I didn't
monkey with the gunpowder."

Mrs. Ess Kay's lips went down at the corners, and her eyes flashed.

"How easy it is to see that woman's game," said she. "Cora Pitchley
knows that Mrs. Van der Windt and the committee will be only too
anxious for us to go to the Pink Ball _now_, and she thinks she sees a
way of getting there too,