"I know more people now than I can get any good of," Phebe said, as she balanced her driver, and then swept it around in a circle with a force which nearly overturned her. "What's the use of any more? There comes Harold; he's going to caddy for me, to-day. I must go." "What do you suppose can be the attraction out at the links?" Theodora said, after she had gone. "Sheer delight in the sport," Hubert answered lazily, for he was sprawling on the sand by his sister's side, and it seemed almost too great an effort to speak. "Isn't there any attendant knight?" Hope asked. "Phebe is impenetrable; but I have sometimes wondered whether there might not be a social side to it, rather than athletic." "Don't waste any romance on Babe, Hope," Hubert advised her. "I wondered about it, myself, for there is rather a gay crowd out there, and I didn't know what might be going on. I went out, one day. I found the others all in a bunch, and Babe tearing around the links all by herself, with her poor caddie trotting hard to keep up with her." "Who's that? Babe?" Allyn had suddenly plunged into the midst of the group. "I hear that the caddies are talking of a boycott, charging her double fees unless she goes slow. She plays a smashing game; but there's no sort of sense in the way she goes about it." Theodora yawned. "Babe is upsetting all my ideas," she said languidly. "I had always regarded golf as a suitable amusement for stout elderly persons who waddled, a good deal like the caucus race in _Alice_. Babe's vigor fairly takes my breath away." "Same with her swimming," Allyn remarked, with a certain pride. "She's gone into it all over." "Into the surf?" Cicely inquired, as she scooped little mounds of sand over his feet. "Yes, just that. She swims under water like a fish. There isn't another girl here to beat her. You are nothing but a porpoise beside her, Cis, and you swim fairly well. Hope, I do wish you'd take lessons. I'm tired of seeing you chug up and down beside that lifeline." "Do you know," Theodora said meditatively; "I'd rather face the footlights at the Metropolitan than come down this beach at the bathing hour. It makes me feel pigeon-toed in the extreme." Cicely eyed her with a calm lack of comprehension born of healthy girlhood. "I don't see why," she said. "Because you stay in the water, and can't hear the gossip along shore," Theodora answered. "Just you stay out here, some morning, and sit in the Dragons' Row, as Billy calls it, and you will find out what I mean. Charity covers a multitude of sins; but it never drapes an awkward woman in an unbecoming bathing suit." "That is where Babe has the advantage," Hubert remarked. "She isn't exactly graceful; but she is no more awkward than an unbroken colt."