For an instant, he looked at her angrily. It was a new experience to
him to have any one take that tone in addressing him. Then he rose
to his feet.

"I am afraid I have been intruding upon your time, Miss McAlister," he
said stiffly.

"You needn't get mad," Phebe observed. "People don't all think alike, you
know; and I only told you my opinion."

He bowed in silence; then he walked away his hands in his pockets
and his cap tilted backwards aggressively. Half-way to the row of
awnings, he spoke.

"Little vixen!" he said forcibly. Then he dropped down on the sand at
Hope's feet, with his back turned flatly towards the figure under the
blue umbrella.

"Then you are coming to supper with us, to-morrow night," Theodora said,
as at length he rose to his feet. "I suppose music is a forbidden
subject, Mr. Barrett; you probably get very tired of the things people
say to you. Still, I have a little cousin staying with me, who is anxious
to meet you, and--"

Her sentence was never finished, and Cicely's anxiety was left hanging in
mid air, for there came a cry from Phebe,--

"Oh, Hope! Mac! Help!"

Mr. Barrett whirled about to face the surf just in time to see Mac
swept off his feet by an incoming wave, drawn back under the next
one and hidden from sight beneath the awful weight of water. With a
quick exclamation, he ran forward into the edge of the water. Then he
drew back.

"Save him," Phebe commanded. "Go in! I can't do anything in this horrid
gown." As she spoke, she tugged fiercely at her fluffy skirt which, wet
to her knees, clung closely about her feet. "Go in and get him!" she
commanded again.

Then for the hour, Gifford Barrett wished that the sand would
close over him.

"I can't," he said through his shut teeth. "It would be of no use."

"Coward!" she said fiercely. "And you would let the boy drown!"

The words had been low and hurried, and no one was near to hear them, or
to check Phebe. For a moment, Mr. Barrett turned white. He started to
reply; then he controlled himself and was silent. This was not the time
to seek to justify himself. The little scene was ended before Billy
Farrington, stripped to his waist, rushed past them and plunged into the
pounding surf.

To the watchers on the shore, it seemed hours since he had disappeared,
days since chubby little Mac had been swept out of sight. The beach
chanced to be deserted, that afternoon; Dr. McAlister could not swim a
stroke, Phebe was powerless