mermen and mermaids who will do classic gambols by the marge
of the sea and play on pipes or shells or whatever it is that
sea-creatures play on. There'll be bathing parties, when the last
syllable of the last word in bathing-kit will be seen; paddling parties,
in carefully thought out _toilettes pour marcher dans l'eau_, and
shell-gathering parties. Stella Clackmannan, who has such an active
brain that everyone's quite anxious about her, is going to have tons of
really pretty shells laid along a part of the beach (above high water),
and people will go shell-gathering _en habit coquilleux_.

The only feature Week-End-on-Sea will have in common with other seaside
places is a parade. At first Stella wouldn't hear of having one; but
Norty told her there's "a deep-seated primal instinct in human nature
for sitting on benches and watching one's fellow-creatures walk up and
down, and it would not be wise to thwart this instinct." He's an
enormously clever boy, and, when it was put to her like that, Stella
gave in. So there's to be a parade on the sea front, and Ray Rymington,
whose sense of the beautiful is _absolutely_, will see after it.
There'll be none of those ghastly glass shelters, but just darling
Sheraton benches at intervals, and the paraders will be carefully
_censored_. Nobody who hasn't _something_ of a profile will be allowed
to walk up and down--and no woman who takes more than 4's in slices or
who's wearing a last year's sleeve. So you see, dearest, it will be
quite a _cachet_, both of person and style, to be seen walking on the
parade at _our_ watering-place. The Bullyon-Boundermere woman met Stella
in town the other day and said, "My dear duchess, how can we thank you
for at last giving us a really _classy_ seaside place?" "What a
wonderful word, Mrs. Boundermere!" answered Stella. "'_Classy_'! Do tell
me what it means!"

Oh, my best one! Such a simply _sumptuous_ storyette for you! Even in
_your_ remote fastnesses you must have heard of young Ivan Rowdidowsky,
the very _very_ latest thing in Russian composer-pianists. Playing the
piano with his elbows, dressed in scarlet velvet, and fuller of "inner
meanings" than anyone (even from _Russia_) ever was before, he captured
London at the beginning of the Little Season, and his vogue has been
_colossal_. He gave twelve elbow-recitals of his own compositions at
Emperor's Hall. Those fearsome interviewers fairly mobbed him, and he
told them, in the _prettiest_ br