"Yes, it goes just like ve clock. He winds it up wiv a key, and ven it goes all right. Grandma!" "Well?" Mac dropped his sand into her lap, and then plumped himself down by her side. "Did you see vat funny man in ve pinky suit? Well, he's Mrs. Benson's boy." "Hush, dear!" Mrs. McAlister said hastily, for Mrs. Benson's awning was next her own. "What for should I hush? He is funny; just you look at him and see." "Mac is earning his right to a place in Dragons' Row," Hubert observed from the spot, ten feet away, where he was taking a sunbath between plunges. "Why don't you come in, mother?" "I dare not face the critics," she answered laughingly, while she emptied Mac's sand from her lap. "I shouldn't come out of it as well as Babe does." Hubert raised himself on his elbow and looked after his sister with evident satisfaction. "She's the best swimmer on the beach, except Mr. Drayton," he said, as he dropped back again and burrowed his brown arms into the sand. "If he gives her many more lessons, she'll beat him at his own trade, and that's saying a good deal." Phebe, meanwhile, had been swimming with the tide and was now far up the shore. There she landed herself through the breakers as craftily as a fisherman lands his dory, and came tramping back toward the awning onto more. Not even the deep sand could hamper her light step, as she came striding along with a perfect disregard of the buzz which passed along the line of awnings parallel with her coming. "Miss Phebe McAlister, Dr. McAlister's daughter, splendid looking girl, but rather eccentric, they say." "A perfect snob; but I don't know as I blame her. Sister to Mrs. Farrington, that tall woman with the handsome husband." "Sister to Mrs. Theodora McAlister Farrington, the novelist. Isn't she superb? But I hear she doesn't care a fig for society." So the buzz ran on, and Phebe passed by, heedless of it, heedless, too, of the gaze of a young man who stood alone, a little back of the line of awnings. It was evident that he was a stranger, for he spoke to no one, although it is not easy to be unsocial at Quantuck. For the rest, he was tall, strongly built, with a fresh, boyish face; he wore a little pointed beard, and he carried himself with an indescribable air of being somebody at whom it was worth while to look twice. "Did you see the new man on the beach, this morning?" Allyn asked, at dinner, that noon. "The new man, when there are new men here, every day in the week!" Theodora's tone was one of amusement. "Evidently you didn't see him, or you'd speak with more respect. He was a duke in disguise, at the very least." "Do you mean the man with the Frenchy beard, and his nose in the air?" Cicely asked, with scant respect for the stranger's ducal appearance. "Yes. Who was he?" "I don't know. He acted as if he did the beach a favor in even looking at it."