New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Short stories; Theater -- Fiction
“Lost--On the beach between Virginia and South Carolina Avenues, a gold
bracelet with seven diamonds. A liberal reward will be paid for its
recovery at the ---- Hotel.”
The hotel named was the one at which Morrow was staying. He hurried
thither.
“Who lost the diamond bracelet?” he asked the clerk.
“That young lady standing near the elevator. Miss Hunt, I think her name
is,” said the clerk consulting the register. “Yes, that's it, she only
arrived last night.”
Morrow saw standing near the elevator door, a lithe, well-rounded girl
with brown hair and great gray eyes that were fixed on him. She was
in the regulation summer-girl attire--blue Eton suit, pink shirtwaist,
sailor hat, and russet shoes. He hastened to her.
“Miss Hunt, I have the honour to return your bracelet.”
She opened her lips and eyes with pleasurable surprise and reached
somewhat eagerly for the piece of jewelry.
“Thank you ever so much. I took a walk on the beach just after breakfast
and dropped it somewhere. It's too large.”
“I picked it up near Pennsylvania Avenue. It's a curious coincidence
that it should be found by some one stopping at the same hotel. But,
pardon me, you're going away without mentioning the reward.”
She looked at him with some surprise, until she discovered that he
was jesting. Then she smiled a smile that gave Morrow quite a pleasant
thrill, and said, with some tenderness of tone:
“Let the reward be what you please.”
“And that will be to do what you shall please to have me do.”
“Ah, that's nice. Then I accept your services at once. I am quite alone
here; haven't any acquaintances in the hotel. I want to go bathing and
I'm rather timid about going alone, although I'd made up my mind to do
so and was just going up after my bathing suit.”
“Then I am to have the happiness of escorting you into the surf.”
They went bathing together not far from where he had found the bracelet.
He discovered that she could swim as well as he; also that in her dark
blue bathing costume, with sailor collar and narrow white braid, she was
a most shapely person.
She laughed frequently while they were breasting the breakers; and
afterwards, as in their street attire they were returning on the
boardwalk, she chatted brightly with him, revealing a certain cleverness
in off-hand persiflage.
He took her into the tent behind the observation wheel to see the
Egyptian exhibition, and she was good enough to laugh at his jokes about
the mummies, although the mummies did not seem to interest her. Further
down the boardwalk they stopped at the Japanese exhibition, and on the
way out he caught himself saying that if it were possible, he would take
great pleasure in hauling her in a jinrikisha.
“I'll remember that promise and make you push me in a wheel-chair,” she
answered.
When they were back at the hotel, she turned suddenly and said:
“By the way, what's your name? Mine's Clara Hunt.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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