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“Oh, they’re natives. We call them that to distinguish them from the cottagers. They get close whenever they get a chance, and copy the cottagers’ clothes and manners. But it doesn’t take a magnifying-glass to see the difference.”

Andrew looked with a pity he did not admit was fellow-feeling at the pretty girls with their bright complexions, their merely stylish clothes–which reminded him of Polly’s–the inferior feathers in their chip hats. The sharp contrast between the two groups of girls was almost painful.

“I’ve got to leave you,” said Chapman; “but I’ll see you later. Take care of yourself.”

The horn tooted, the whip cracked, the coach started. The men on the club balcony above the Casino watched it lazily. The street between the coach and the green wall opposite had been blocked with carriages that now rolled away.

Webb turned his attention to the group of cottagers. One of the girls wore a yellow organdie trimmed with black velvet ribbons, a large Leghorn covered with yellow feathers and black velvet. She was not pretty, but she had “an air,” and that was supremest beauty in Andrew’s eyes. Another was in lilac, another in pink. Each had the same sleek brown hair, the same ivory complexion. In attendance was a tall clumsily built but very imposing young man with sleepy blue eyes and a mighty mustache. The girls paid him marked attention.

They chatted for a few moments, then walked through the entrance of the Casino, over the lawn, towards the lower balcony of the horseshoe surrounding it. Andrew followed, fascinated. The young man in attendance walked after the manner of his kind, and Andrew, unconsciously imitating him, ascended the steps, seated himself with an air of elaborate indifference opposite the party in the narrow semicircle, and composed his face into an expression of blank abstraction. His trouble was wasted: they did not see him. They had an air of seeing no one in the world but their kind. One of the girls, to Andrew’s horror, crossed her knees and swung her foot airily. The young man sank into a slouching position. Another girl joined the group, but he did not rise when introduced, nor offer to get her a chair. She was obliged to perform that office, at some difficulty, for herself.

The band began to play. Andrew leaned forward, gazing at the floor, intent upon hearing these people actually converse. But their talk only came to him in snatches between the rise and fall of the music. Like many other New-Yorkers, he had a deaf ear.

“My things disappear so”–(from the yellow girl) … “I suspect my maid wears them…. Don’t really know what I have…. Don’t dare say anything.” This was said with a languid drawl which Andrew thought delicious.

All laughed.

“Shall you go to Paris this year?”

“I don’t know … till time comes…. Then we keep four servants up all night packing…. Must have some new gowns…. You know how you have to talk to Ducet and Paquin yourself.”

The young man went to sleep. The girls put their heads together and whispered. After a time they arose with a little capricious air, which completed Andrew’s subjugation, and strolled away.

VI

That evening, as he sat with Chapman over the coffee in the stately little dining-room of the victim of cordage, the journalist remarked suddenly:

“I say, old fellow, you don’t seem to be in it. Don’t you know anybody here at all?”

Andrew shook his head gloomily.

“Well, you’ll have a stupid time, I’m afraid. There are only three classes of people that come to Newport–the swells, the people who want to see the swells, and the correspondents whose unhappy fate it is to report the doings of the swells. Now, what on earth did you come here for?”

Andrew had not a confiding nature, but he could not repress a dark flush. The astute little journalist understood it.

“It’s too bad you didn’t bring a letter or two. One would have made it easy work. You look as well as any of them, and you’ve got the boodle. Where did you come from, anyway?”