Genevieve and Penny almost fell out of the car in their anxiety not to miss a point, and George quite deliberately lingered on the cross-streets, so that the damning total might be increased. Laughing and breathless, they came to the bridge that led from the town to the open fields, and took the count. "One hundred and two and a half!" shouted Penny and Genevieve triumphantly. George smiled over his wheel. "Oh, women, women!" he said. "One hundred and sixty-one!" said Betty. There was a shout of protest. "Oh, Betty Sheridan! You didn't! Why, we didn't miss _one_!" "I wasn't counting candy stores," smiled Betty. "Just to be different, I counted cigar stores and saloons. But it doesn't signify much either way, does it, George?" CHAPTER VI. BY HENRY KITCHELL WEBSTER Of the quartette who, an hour later, emerged from the bath-houses and scampered across the satiny beech into a discreetly playful surf, Genevieve was the one real swimmer. She was better even than Penny, and she left Betty and George nowhere. She had an endless repertory of amphibious stunts which she performed with gusto, and in the intervals she took an equal satisfaction in watching Penny's heroic but generally disastrous attempts to imitate them. The other two splashed around aimlessly and now and then remonstrated. Now, it's all very well to talk about two hearts beating as one, and in the accepted poetical sense of the words, of course Genevieve's and George's did. But as a matter of physiological fact, they didn't. At the end of twenty minutes or so George began turning a delicate blue and a clatter as of distant castanets provided an obligato when he spoke, the same being performed by George's teeth. The person who made these observations was Betty. "You'd better go out," she said. "You're freezing." It ought to have been Genevieve who said it, of course, though the fact that she was under water more than half the time might be advanced as her excuse for failing to say it. But who could venture to excuse the downright callous way in which she exclaimed, "Already? Why we've just got in! Come along and dive through that wave. That'll warm you up!" It was plain to George that she didn't care whether he was cold or not. And, though the idea wouldn't quite go into words, it was also clear to him that an ideal wife--a really womanly wife--would have turned blue just a little before he began to. "Thanks," he said, in a cold blue voice that matched the color of his finger nails. "I think I've had enough." Betty came splashing along beside him. "I'm going out, too," she said. "We'll leave these porpoises to their innocent play."