Julia was in a white and crimson combing-gown, with her hair streaming; but she had not yet removed her wet riding-boots, and there was, to Mrs. Budd’s eye, something distressingly indiscreet in such foot-gear appearing from the folds of a peignoir. “Oh, Julia _dear_!” she remonstrated. Julia laughed, and offered a spurred heel to the maid. “I can’t bear to take them off,” she said. “You _did_ have a nice time, didn’t you, pettie, in spite of the dripping fog and the dreadful wind! But I should have been anxious if you had been with any one but Charlie Thair. You _did_ have a nice time, didn’t you?” “Magnificent! Uproarious!” “Oh, _not_ uproarious!” her mother protested. “Yes, really. I should think you would have heard us! We sang, ‘The Hounds of Maynell,’ from the landing to the lighthouse as hard as we could shout. We got the triple echo to saying all sorts of things. And then—” she paused, fitting her feet into white satin shoes, while Mrs. Budd agonized in suspense—“well, then, when we got out to ‘Tres Pinos’ there was such a surf we simply had to yell to make each other hear. And there,” concluded Julia, with a flourish of animation, quite as though she had reached the climax of her tale—“_there_ my hat blew off.” Mrs. Budd threw her hands in her lap with a gesture of resignation not lost upon her daughter. “And Charlie was such a dear!” Julia smiled tenderly at the toe of her shoe, and Mrs. Budd gathered a faint hope. “He piled off his horse and fell around in the fog for half an hour, and nearly drowned himself, till I said, ‘Oh, let it go,’ and he said, ‘All right, young madam,’ and off we went.” Mrs. Budd’s expression of acute disappointment arrested her daughter’s attention. “Why, what did you expect he did, mama? Surely not something horrid?” “Indeed, no. I’m quite certain, Julia, if Charlie Thair ever did _anything_ at all, it could not be horrid.” Julia stared a minute at this ambiguous paradox. Then she chuckled. “I never liked him so much, mama. I got him all waked up. He didn’t have any time to be witty or tiresome. And on the way home what do you think he said?” Mrs. Budd hung upon the revelation. “He said,” Julia continued, with a touch of pride, “that I was awfully good sorts, if I was a beauty. Now wasn’t that nice of him, mama?” Mrs. Budd gasped. There were almost tears in her reply. “My dear Julia, you _must_ not encourage that sort of attitude in a man. You must not forget that you are no longer a child. And I don’t at _all_ approve of your stramming round the country, singing at the top of your lungs, in your second season! Suppose you had met those people driving up from the station!” “Who is the woman who came with Mr. Longacre?” Julia inquired irrelevantly.