"Yes," said her brother, with a sigh, "that will be very nice. But it will come on now anyway. Anybody can do it." "Oh, St. John, you dishearten me. Already you want to do 'some great thing.' Isn't that a bad sign, for so young a man?" He was silent. "I wish," she said, with a shade of impatience, "I wish you'd tell me, if you don't mind, what sort of work you want to do? What sort of people, pray, do you want to have the charge of?" "I like wicked people," he said, very quietly. "You--St. John! Fie. What do you know about wickedness?" "More than you think, perhaps," he said uneasily, getting up, and turning his back upon the blue water. "Come, we won't talk about this any more. What have you been doing since Tuesday, and how is mamma?" "Mamma is as usual; we haven't done anything of interest. Oh, yes. I went to call on the new people next door; and we are much interested in making out what and who they are. I was not admitted. Madame is an invalid, I believe, and rarely sees any one. The children are queer little things, the girl a beauty. I see them often peeping through the hedge." "How about the gentleman? have you seen him?" "No; the Olors know him slightly and say he's nice. The wife seems to be a mystery. No one knows anything about her. I am quite curious. They have lived several years abroad, and do not seem to have many ties here. At least no one seems to know much of them, in the city." "I hope they're church people?" "I don't know, indeed. I should not think it likely. The children have an elfish, untamed look, and there is such a troop of foreign-looking servants. What they need of all those people to keep such a plain, small house going, I can't imagine. I have no doubt they will demoralize our women. Two nurses do nothing but sit on the beach all day, and look at the two children who dig in the sand. The coachman never seems to do anything but smoke his pipe from the time of taking his master to the cars in the morning till the time of going for him in the evening. They have a man-waiter. I cannot think what for. He and the cook and the maid all seem to be French, and spend much of their morning in the boat-house. We have the 'Fille de Mme. Angot,' and odors of cheap cigars across the hedge. It isn't pleasant." "How you do long to reconstruct that household!" "In self-defense. I shouldn't wonder if we had to change every servant in our house before the summer is over. Even Goneril does nothing but furtively watch them from the upper windows and make reflections upon the easy times they have." At this moment there was a splash in the water, and a cry. They had been sitting with their backs to the shell which St. John had left below on the beach, and a boy of five, the new neighbors' boy, had climbed into it, and, quite naturally, tumbled out of it. St. John vaulted over the fence, took two or three strides into the water, and picked him out.