Free Elisabeth Fairchild by The Counterfeit Coachman

occupant down the wet steps. The woman looked as if she were more prepared to tuck into a feather mattress than the sea, clad as she was in her high-necked, long-sleeved, bathing wrapper.
    Charley inhaled noisily, a sign of his delight, and whistled. “Sea water cures all ills. Look there! That flimsy bit of wrapping becomes absolutely diaphonous when wet! Most appealing when the form beneath is worth viewing. It is as if one were privileged to witness a flock of sea nymphs rising up out of the depths.”
    “Or a school of whales,” Beau murmured as he collapsed his spy glass. He was not as consumed with the delight of watching shivering sea-bathers embarrass themselves by standing sodden and for all intents and purposes unveiled to their fellow man, in the rolling waves.
    Bandit, who had been snoozing at their feet, sat up suddenly, ears pricked. A high-pitched whine slipped his throat.
    Charley, gaze drawn from his spyglass, glanced down to see what attracted the dog’s fixed attention.
    “Jove!” he said mildly, “Is that not your long-limbed horse leaper from Godstone, heading down to the water just now?”
    Beau brought his spyglass whipping out to full length and pressed it to his eye. There below, picking a path between the nets that had been set to dry along the rocky beach, stepped Fanella Quinby, dressed all in white save for the wide rose-colored sash at her waist, that matched the rose-colored lining on the old fashioned straw bonnet that he pleasantly recognize as the one he had bought her. She was further protected from the harsh rays of the sun today by an attractively frilled white parasol, from whose center post, a number of thin rose-colored ribbons fluttered. She was preceded by her aunt.
    “Yes, it is she,” he concurred, “but, you a-a-are in for a disappointment if you think to catch a glimpse of the young lady’s charms today.”
    Charley chuckled suggestively. “No whale there, eh?”
    “It is the a-a-aunt who takes the water cure,” Beau said with benign certainty.
    “Drat! I should not at all mind seeing the wetting of that one. Did you get a chance to chat her up, on your way down from Godstone?’
    “Miss Quinby is a high-minded young lady, Charley, and while I did not  “chat her up” a-a-as you have so vulgarly put it, we did have occasion to speak. You do her disservice to speak so lightly of her person.”
    Charley laughed again. “Do I? One might almost discern a possesive note in your voice, my friend. Any female foolish or free-spirited enough to display her charms in the suds, is fair game for every masculine eye trained in her direction.”
    He waved his hand at the crest of the beachhead where sunlight glinted off an array of spyglasses, telescopes, opera glasses and monocles. “If you did not take advantage, and chat her up, perhaps I shall have to do so myself.” He squinted into his glass again, and crowed, “Oh ho! We shall see her wetted yet. It would appear auntie has requested her lovely niece’s company.”
    Beau leaned into his telescope, experiencing a confused mixture of breathless anticipation and alarm.
    Ursula Dunn stood poised at the top of the set of steps leading into a bright blue bathing box, a flannel bathing smock clutched in one hand, while the other desperately motioned for her niece to join her. One could almost make out the individual words in the steady stream of entreaty.
    Looking coolly obstinate as she shook her bonneted head and twirled a parasol in agitation, Nell did not appear inclined to go.
    The dipper who manned the bathing box, a stout, sun-browned woman with tightly fleshed limbs and several layers of dripping cloth twisted about her barrel-like figure, entered into the discussion, by offering another of the undistinguished flannel smocks to Nell, and wagging both her tongue and her finger, first toward the beach, where a line of people waited for the bathing boxes that had not been booked ahead of time, and then at Ursula Dunn,