Argosy All-Story Weekly, March 15, 1924 — page 53: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

_j—_, YOUNG any of our girls in bathing suits like them. Them suits must have been made when there was an acute shortage of material. _ But I dunno at that. old and fat has something to do with it, but T ain’t never been shocked none by the clothes the young girls has been wearing late years in our town. I don’t see that there has been nothing dangerous to society in them clothes. Looks like to me they are pretty sensible. Well, the bathing suits these young girls had on was mebbe a mite extreme, but if they was meant for swimming in I should have. said that they wouldn’t impede the swimmer. none. And mebbe that is what a bathing suit is for. There was a consider- able flashing of brown legs and arms and chests as the girls run their race along the beach ‘in answer to that “one for the money ” cry, but: that didn’t disturb me none. - I took a peek at Jimmie, and, by golly, he was smiling. You. must remember that that boy had been brought up in a very strait-laced fashion, and I had expected. a frown instead of a smile from him. I concluded that his college career had not - been strait-laced. He was a man with a past, which he had hid when he come home from school: That was it. | “The young hoydens,” he murmured. “ Beautiful, aren’t they, Mr. Tom Hill?” “ Lovely,” says I, and they was all a that. They was young girls, slim and straight and care-free like young girls should always be: They had rubber caps on their heads and their damp hair went floating out from under the caps. It was brown hair and black hair, and one girl had reddish hair that the sun glinted in. Ah, me, I wished I was slim and young. I had: never been that. Even when I was a boy I was a big fat lout. One thing I re- member vivid about my mother was that she always told me I was welcome to all the food I needed for strength, but not to be, a pig. Well, me and Jimmie stood watching the girl and for the time Jimmie seemed to have fergot about what he had come to the ‘beach for. His arms was folded and Mebbe my being a REBELS, that smile still hung on his lips. Then one of the girls jumped up with a spring from - her hands and legs. I forgot to say they had throwed them- selves down on the sand whilst we were watching them. She went down to the edge of the water and felt of it with her toes.: She kind of shrugged herself together, though: I knowed the water wasn’t cold. She was mighty pretty as she stood there,. prettiest one of the lot, I believed. Then she turned around to the other girls and we had a full view of her face. Her chin was tilted and she was smiling so that. we could see her white teeth gleam. ‘“Let’s go in,” she says in a high, sweet voice. than anybody.” : I glanced at Jimmie again. That smile had gone under a cloud. You could have laid a lead pencil in the furrow between Jimmie’s eyes, and his lips was curled back like a wolf’s, though I ain’t never seen a wolf curl its lips. Anyhow, he v was lookin’ most forbiddin’. “ My wife!” he says under his breath. : ‘My wife in that garb!” It does make a considerable difference whose ox is gored. Jimmie had been all for them: pretty young girls in what you might call an abstract kind of a way, but when some of the loveliness proved to be part of his own family, things didn’t stack up quite like they done before. So Jimmie stands there like a statue. The girls lined up at the top of the beach under the bluff. Sadie starts to count. Then they flew over the hard sand, jumped the » rocks and shells at the edge of the water, jumped in, waded, splashing for a minute, and then started to swim. Their heads was just above water for a few seconds, then the heads disappeared, brown legs kicked — above the surface, and then the slim bodies: One by one the heads come: I had no- went under. up till there was four of them. ticed that Sadie’s cap was a flaming red; she kind of run to vivid things, you know; and the cap that didn’t come up was the red one. I don’t suppose it was very long that me and Jimmie stood there on the bluff waiting for that red cap to show, but to me it DOO 681: “TH bet I can stay under longer™ SS CO CONMUC