"I think you're wrong about that, really," Durland said. "I think anyone--even a very just man like Uncle Anthony--would say that women can't think, at least not like men." "Would he, indeed?" said Pearl. "Well, I don't know him; but he may be the kind of man who prefers inferior people of both sexes." Durland, unable to believe she really thought this, looked wistfully into her face for a sign of relenting. "Of course," he said, "you are very unusual. You must not judge other women by yourself." "I was fifteenth in my class," said Pearl. "Quite stupid compared to the others; but even I never had any trouble with algebra. I put my mind on it. That's the trouble with boys--they're so scattered." This was cruel, considering who had scattered him; but like many cruelties it worked. As the hour finished, Dolly came downstairs and said, without looking at anyone, that she herself was going immediately in the motor to Shinnecock for her golf lesson and could not delay an instant; but if Antonia were there and ready there was no objection to dropping her and Miss Exeter at the public beach. At that moment Antonia, who, just as her mother had suggested, had been crabbing since dawn, appeared on the lawn, streaked with seaweed and exuding a faintly ancient and fishy smell. Dolly was like steel and would not allow her a moment for changing; and so, dropping her crabs and nets on the piazza, Antonia with Miss Exeter got into the car after Dolly, and were duly dropped at the little group of dark-red bathing houses that formed the entrance to the public beach. Pearl found the child, in spite of her personal untidiness, a most agreeable companion. She had read widely and with imagination. She knew a great deal of poetry--rather martial poetry--by heart; all of Horatius, for instance, which she said she usually recited to herself in the dentist's chair and from which she gained comfort. They were walking up the wide steps to the bathing house as she spoke, and she stopped and bent down to examine a boy's bicycle--she was a connoisseur of bicycles. They came in sight of the beach now--all set out with bright-colored umbrellas like gay poisonous mushrooms. It was the hour when the beach was given over to children. Pearl was thinking that it looked very pretty, when once again she heard Antonia's clarion voice break out at her elbow. "Hi, there, you kids! Leave that fort alone! It's mine!" She darted down the narrow boardwalk toward an immense hole in the sand, scattering a band of neatly dressed children, much as the effete Romans were scattered by the first onslaught of the northern barbarians. Pearl could not help laughing as she saw children run to their governesses or snatched back by their nurses; but the next moment she was sorry, for she saw that it was being said in various tongues that Antonia was quite the worst brought-up child in the world. Pearl was nothing if not a partisan, and she was already completely on Antonia's side.