twelve o'clock
It was the beach 's most crowded hour and the short strip of sand in front of the most fashionable and uncomfortable place to bathe on Long Island was gay as a patch of exhibition sweet-peas with every shade of vivid or delicate color . It was a triumph of women -- the whole glittering , moving bouquet of stripes and patterns and tints that wandered slowly from one striped parasol-mushroom to the next -- the men , in their bathing suits or white flannels seemed as unimportant if necessary furniture as slaves in an Eastern court . The women dominated , from the jingle of the bags in the hands of the dowagers and the faint , protesting creak of their corsets as they picked their way as delicately as fat , gorgeous macaws across the sand , to the sound of their daughters ' voices , musical as a pigeon-loft , as they chattered catchwords at each other and their partners , or occasionally , very occasionally , dipped in for a three-minute swim . Moreover , and supremely , it was a triumph of ritual , and such ritual as reminded Oliver a little of the curious , unanimous and apparently meaningless movements of a colony of penguins , for the entire assemblage had arrived around , twelve o'clock and by a quarter past one not one of them would be left . That was law as unwritten and unbreakable as that law which governs the migratory habits of wild geese . And within that little more than an hour possibly one-third of them would go as far as wetting their hands in the water -- all the rest had come for the single reason of seeing and being seen . It was all extremely American and , on the whole , rather superb , Oliver thought as he and Peter moved over nearer to the parasol that sheltered Elinor and Ted .