Page:Glitter (1926).pdf/322

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a great house of white clapboard, with spacious porches at its sides and front and green-and-white awnings astir at its windows; and, on beyond the house, the stretching blue of water into sky. . . .

"Whew!" sighed Jock ecstatically.

"See that float anchored out a way?" Peg said. "Those little insects crawling around on it are the houseparty. Part of it, anyway. The rest are probably on the dock—you can't see that from here, it's under the bluff.

"Jump into your suit quick, Jock," she concluded, as the car executed a sniveling stop beside the house, "and we'll get right down there."

Johnny conducted him upstairs into a huge bedroom boasting several cot beds and a tremendous litter of masculine effects. "This," explained Johnny, "is the bachelors' boudoir. All in here together, have more fun that way. Make it snappy now, will you, Jock? We'll be ready in five minutes. Meet you downstairs."

Jock needed no exhortations to hurry. In several seconds less than five minutes he descended to the first floor again, and waited, full of a sense of expectancy so exquisite that it was scarcely to be endured. Johnny and Peg, descending a little after him, found him standing on the porch with his eyes toward the water, looking, as Peg whispered, "Like a statue of Adonis in tights."

She approached him and stood on tiptoe to lay a solicitous hand on his forehead. "Poor boy, how're you bearing up?" she begged. "Why, he's feverish! He ought to be put to bed!"

But Jock was past the point where he could jest. "Come on," he said. "Let's move." And then, as Peg and Johnny laughed at him, "That ole sea's going to feel good!"