"'Oh, aren't these excursions perfectly lovely, Ruby?' said the taller of the pair, taking off her hat and dropping it in her lap. "'Yes, and so cheap. All the way to Indian Head and back for a quarter. It's a godsend for us poor tired folks who have to stay in town all summer. And you know what that means, don't you, Pearl?' "'Oh, yes, but don't let's talk about it,' said the other fretfully. 'I try not even to think of what we will have to go through. What good does it do to fuss over things we can't help?' "'That's right, dear,' said her companion, 'and it doesn't pay to look far ahead, either, if one wants to be happy. I never do.' "They were pretty and quite well dressed, these two maidens. As to their being without a male escort, I rather admired their sturdy independence. Everything about them bespoke refinement, and yet the very next remark from the girl called Ruby sent a shiver through my sensitive frame, and caused my hastily formed but favorable opinion of the pair to change color. "'I'd give anything, Pearl, if Will and the other fellows were here. They always buy, and I've got an awful thirst on me.' "'We might have some beer, anyway,' mildly suggested Pearl, and a flying waiter took the order. "'I guess we can pick up something on the boat,' remarked Ruby; who, by the way, was good to look at--a black-eyed lass with regular features and lots of pink and white complexion. Pearl, languidly sipping her beer, nodded in the affirmative. This person, evidently the younger of the two, had a babyish face, big innocent blue eyes, and a profusion of fluffy yellow hair. She did not appeal as much to my sense of the beautiful as the dark one did; but I have always been partial to brunettes. She told me later that she was twenty--which figure was enough for me to know, I suppose. Oh, I understand women. They are an open book to me. "About eight o'clock the moon, immense and crimson, came up from behind the Maryland hills, and cast a lurid path upon the wavelets. The girls, or rather the 'Jewels,' as I have since learned to think of them, huddled closer together, with a not too capacious shawl around them, for the wind was freshening considerably. For a while I stopped looking at them, being interested in the little stunts that are done on the boat as it passes Mount Vernon. The tolling of the bell and the dirge by the band absorbed all my attention.