Belles on their Toes

thinking of us.
    She brought out the presents while we were finishing our dessert. There were Czech dolls for Jane and Lillian, and Paris hats for Martha, Ernestine, Anne. The girls' presents were a big success.
    But the boys had trouble hiding their disappointment, when they unwrapped their packages and found that each contained a blue beret.
    "All the men in France are wearing them," Mother "I thought you might like to start the style over here."
    "They're just what we've always wanted," Frank said stoutly, trying to banish from his mind what might happen to him and Bill if they wore the berets to school.
    "I guess," said Mother, "that I don't know as much about getting presents for boys as your father did. That's something I'm going to have to learn, isn't it?"
    "Dad never brought anything better," Bill protested. Just old stuff like knives and watches."
    "'You're good boys," Mother said. "I'll remember about old stuff like that if I go away again."
    Martha asked if Mother had remembered to bring the bathing suit from Montclair. Mother shook her
    "I had some business in New York, and couldn't spare the time to go to Montclair. So I picked you up a suit at Macy's instead." She handed Martha a package .
    "If it comes below my knees," said Martha, fumbling with the wrappings, "can I take a hem in it?"
    "Goodness, it won't come below your knees," Mother laughed. "It's a one-piece suit."
    "One piece?" Anne and Ernestine shouted together.
    "No girls wear those old-fashioned two-piece suits more, do they?" Mother asked.
    "We do," said Ernestine. "Remember Dad's rules."
    "Modesty," Anne recited flatly. "Skirts at least to the knees. Black stockings. And a minimum of skin showing."
    "Times change," Mother told them, "and your father would have changed with them. In most things, he was a good bit ahead of his time. I'll admit he usually stayed pretty far behind them when it came to how his daughters should dress."
    Martha held up the suit. It was light blue, and had a low-cut neck.

    "If you say, 'On your mark, get set, go' to me," Ernestine told her, "I'll scratch your eyes out."
    "You'll have to beat me to them," said Anne, besides, my fingernails are longer."
    Martha looked at the two oldest girls, and there was sympathy in her glance.
    "I wonder if the budget couldn't stand new suits for Anne and Ernestine," she asked.
    '"Those old maids would be too modest," Frank put in.
    The two girls didn't say anything, but they looked at Mother.
    "I believe the budget can stand a knife tor each of the boys," Mother said. "But I don't believe we need more bathing suits."
    She handed Anne and Ernestine each a package Martha's.

7
BELLES ON THEIR TOES

    With Mother home, the girls' self-imposed ban on dating was automatically lifted. Anne and Ernestine went back into circulation, hopefully rejoining their beach crowd of previous summers.
    The competition was unusually stiff, because there were about three times as many girls as boys. Most of last summer's crop of males were now in college and had summer jobs on the mainland. It was apparent that in order to get rings on their fingers, belles would have to be on their toes.
    Morton Dykes, besides being tall and good looking, had brought a Hupmobile roadster to the island and had rented a motorboat. So he had long since been admitted—in fact shanghaied—into the crowd. The group collected each morning, before going into the water, in a hollow formed by three sand dunes, near the Cliff Beach Bathhouse. Of all the sheiks encamped on those semi-secluded sands, Morton had amassed the largest and most eager harem.
    But in spite of the manpower shortage, Anne at first wouldn't have anything to do with him.
    Anne may not have been a raging beauty, but she was no strain at all upon the eyes, especially in her new bathing suit. Also, there is a possibility that Morton had become tired of having a half-dozen panting females hurrying to strike a match, every time he put a cigarette in his mouth. In any event, he did everything he could to get back in Anne's good graces.
    "I don't see why you always give me the cold shoulder," he told Anne one morning, sitting down beside her on the sand.
    "If I weren't a lady," said Anne, "I'd give you something that started from the shoulder. And the result would be even colder."
    "I don't see what you're sore about."
    "Look," Anne whispered. "There are at least fifteen beautiful women here who are dying for you to come and sit with them. Why don't you go