“During college vacation, I’d meet up with my old gang in the Lower East and we’d come down on the steamer and make a day of it. I was never dumb enough to bet on any of those games, though. We drank beer. Watched the girls. Went sea-bathing.”

“Sea-bathing! I would love to try that. I almost did once in Ireland, at Bray which is a little seaside resort near Dublin, but it was October and Lewis was appalled.”

“Lewis?”

“Julia’s brother-in-law. An actor and an artist, too, amongst other things. Haven’t I mentioned him before? Julia told me in her last letter that he was talking of going to Paris to help tend to the wounded from the war with Prussia. I haven’t heard if he did, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Lewis,” Margaret said, “is a butterfly. Once he masters something, he moves on. It was actually he who first planted the idea of coming to America in my head.”

“Then I’m grateful to him. Here we are. What do you think of the beach?”

“It goes on forever!” she exclaimed, delightedly eyeing the long, narrow stretch of sand which shelved steeply below the path, the waves rolling gently in. “And it smells so fresh here, so very different from the city. I am so glad we came.”

“Will we stroll on a bit?”

“Yes, please. Are those bathing huts?” Margaret pointed to a row of little whitewashed cabins perched on the sands. “Do you think they would provide us with suits?”

Randolph burst out laughing. “Dear lord, you’re serious?”

“Aren’t ladies permitted in the water?”

“There’s no rule against it, so far as I know, though whether it’s something respectable ladies do . . .”

“Is that a gauntlet being thrown down?”

“Lady Margaret Montagu Douglas Scott, sea-bathing.” Randolph shook his head mock-disapprovingly.

“Come on, Randolph, surely you’re not feart, as Molly would say?”

“Certainly not, but I think we’ll head farther along. As I said, Brighton Beach is a bit more respectable. We can hire a couple of huts from the Tilyou’s Surf House, which I have frequented many times because he sells proper German lager.”

“Excellent, something refreshing to look forward to after our swim.”

The Surf House was a large wooden shack with a rickety veranda built on the sand. The boarding advertised Bavarian lager at five cents a glass on one side, and fancy flannel bathing suits on the other. For a modest sum of twenty-five cents apiece, Margaret and Randolph rented a hut, each complete with a suit and a towel, and were informed that they would qualify for a bowl of homemade chowder after their swim.

“‘Bathing without full suits is positively prohibited by law,’” Margaret read, as she clutched her suit and towel outside the hut allotted to her. “There don’t seem to be very many people in the water.”

“Having second thoughts?”