sin, at least as far as
marrying a nice girl was concerned. He stretched back lazily, digging
elbows into the warm sand.

The day had really been too hot for anything more vigorous than "just
lying around in the sun like those funny kinds of lizards," as Peter put
it, and besides, he and Oliver had an offensive-defensive alliance of
The Country's Tiredest Young Business Men and insisted that their only
function in life was to be gently and graciously amused. And certainly
the spectacle about them was one to provide amusement in the extreme for
even the most mildly satiric mind.

It was the beach's most crowded hour and the short strip of sand in
front of the most fashionable and uncomfortable place to bathe on Long
Island was gay as a patch of exhibition sweet-peas with every shade
of vivid or delicate color. It was a triumph of women--the whole
glittering, moving bouquet of stripes and patterns and tints that
wandered slowly from one striped parasol-mushroom to the next--the
men, in their bathing suits or white flannels seemed as unimportant if
necessary furniture as slaves in an Eastern court. The women dominated,
from the jingle of the bags in the hands of the dowagers and the faint,
protesting creak of their corsets as they picked their way as delicately
as fat, gorgeous macaws across the sand, to the sound of their
daughters' voices, musical as a pigeon-loft, as they chattered
catchwords at each other and their partners, or occasionally, very
occasionally, dipped in for a three-minute swim. Moreover, and
supremely, it was a triumph of ritual, and such ritual as reminded
Oliver a little of the curious, unanimous and apparently meaningless
movements of a colony of penguins, for the entire assemblage had arrived
around, twelve o'clock and by a quarter past one not one of them would
be left. That was law as unwritten and unbreakable as that law which
governs the migratory habits of wild geese. And within that little more
than an hour possibly one-third of them would go as far as wetting
their hands in the water--all the rest had come for the single reason of
seeing and being seen. It was all extremely American and, on the whole,
rather superb, Oliver thought as he and Peter moved over nearer to the
parasol that sheltered Elinor and Ted.

"I wish it was Egypt," said Peter languidly. "Any more peppermints left,
El? No--well, Ted never could restrain himself when it came to food. I
wish it was Egypt," he repeated, maki