Phebe, Her Profession Part 23

"Do you think you could work it, Mac?"

"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 sh.o.r.e. 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 pa.s.sed 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 sn.o.b; 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 pa.s.sed 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 amus.e.m.e.nt.

"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."

"He didn't look that way at Babe," Allyn remarked, with a chuckle. "I thought sure he was going to applaud her, when she came stalking down the beach."

"Babe does take the beach a good deal after the manner of Lady Macbeth,"

Lilly observed. "Where was your man, Allyn? I didn't see any t.i.tled strangers of my acquaintance."

"He was just back of the Whitmans' awning for a long time. After that, he came down to Mr. Drayton and talked to him. I didn't see him speak to anybody else, though."

"Oh," Hubert said suddenly; "I know the man you mean, Allyn. There is a good deal of him, too. Sam Asquith told me he had just come to the hotel.

He is a composer and hails from New York."

"What is his name?" Theodora asked rather indifferently.

"Gifford Barrett."

"Oh!" There was a clatter, as Cicely dropped her knife and fork and clasped her hands in ecstasy. "Really?"

"Is it so painful as all that, Cis?" Allyn inquired.

"Pain! It's utter rapture. I've always felt that, if I could just once look at Gifford Barrett, I could die happy. Do you know who he is, you ignorant ones?"

The others owned up to their mental darkness; but Theodora said vaguely,--

"Seems to me I met him once. The name is half-way familiar."

Cicely groaned.

"Half-way familiar! I should rather say it was."

"Who is he, anyway?" Allyn demanded.

"Who? Why, he wrote the _Alan Breck Overture_."

"What's that?"

"Allyn! When I have played it on an average of twice a day, ever since I came here! Haven't you any ears?"

"Not for your kind of music," Allyn returned bluntly. "I want a little tune in mine."

"Who is the man?" Billy asked. "Is he really of any account, Cis?"

"I should think he was. Mr. Paulson, my teacher in New York, said he is the greatest American composer," she returned triumphantly.

"A genuine lion, not a duke," Hubert observed. "But I thought composers always wore their hair in flowing ringlets, Cicely. This man is too well groomed to be really inspired."

Theodora laughed suddenly.

"Hu, you remind me of Mrs. Benson. The day after I came, she asked me whether Miss Greenway didn't write books; she thought all people who wrote books were generally a little untidy."

"Did you enlighten her?"

"I couldn't, for I had just ripped my jacket sleeve open for more than two inches. 'Twas made with one of those insidious one-thread machines, and I tried to pull out a loose st.i.tch. Since then, she has avoided the subject of Miss Greenway, and I have spent a good share of my energy in mending the more visible portions of my attire. I didn't know before that the eyes of the world were upon us, as upon a peculiar people."

But Cicely had returned to the charge.

"Cousin Hubert, how long is he going to be here?"