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 “Well, you see, I don’t go in during the day. I go in early in the morning, before you are up.”

“Say, I hadn’t thought of that. I bet it’s fine then, isn’t it? How about calling me in the morning, when you are ready to go in? Will you?” He hesitated again and she added, watching him with her sober opaque eyes, “Is it because you don’t like to go swimming with girls? That’s all right: I won’t bother you. I swim pretty well. You won’t have to keep me from drowning.”

“It ain’t that,” he answered lamely. “You see, I—I haven’t got a bathing suit,” he blurted.

“Oh, is that all? I’ll get my brother’s for you. It'll be kind of tight, but I guess you can wear it. I’ll get it for you now, if you'll go in.”

“I can’t,” he repeated. “I’ve still got some cleaning up to do.”

“Well—” She got to her feet. “If you won’t, then. But in the morning? you promised, you know.”

“All right,” he agreed.

“I’ll try to be awake. But you just knock on the door—the second door on the right of the passage, you know.” She turned on her silent bare feet. She paused again. “Don’t forget you promised,” she called back. Then her flat boy’s body was gone, and David turned again to his work.

The niece went on up the deck and turned the corner of the deckhouse on her silent feet just in time to see Jenny rout and disperse an attack by Mr. Talliaferro. She stepped back beyond the corner, unseen.

Boldness. But Fairchild had said you can’t be bold with words. How, then, to be bold? To try to do anything without words, it seemed to him, was like trying to grow grain