I had let myself get sidetracked. I grabbed the first handkerchief I saw and jammed it in my pocket.

Beatty wouldn’t mind me attending the camp dance. She’d expect me to.

“I like the decorations,” Maggie said, looking up at the red and green paper streamers spanning the rec hall ceiling. She and several girlfriends had been among the first to arrive, and soon after, they’d shooed her my way and then taken off in a giggling clutch.

I’d wondered about the joke they hadn’t let me in on. Whatever it was, it had flustered Maggie.

She repeated her compliment about the decorations. “The room’s festive,” she said. “Nice and big, too.”

“We moved out some of the furniture,” I told her, bringing that line of talk to a dead end. Then I thought to ask, “Are your folks here?”

She answered, “No. They’re home taking care of a sick cow.”

“What’s wrong with it?” I asked.

“Got the runs,” she answered, which dead-ended that line of talk, too.

Our conversation hadn’t slogged along so badly the previous times we’d met, and I wondered why it was doing so now. I was saved from the need for another go at it by the major tapping a glass for quiet.

He was wearing a fancier uniform than the one he wore on workdays, and he had with him another dressed-up officer, a captain I didn’t know.

“I want to thank you all for turning out for the 597’s first party,” Major Garrett said. “We aim to make you as welcome here as you’ve made us in your community. In another month or so we’ll hold an open house so you can see the plans for the conservation work we’ll be doing, as well as see more of the camp than just our recreation hall. But tonight’s for having fun, and I hope that’s what you’ll do.”

He nodded toward a bosomy lady in a print dress and big hat. “Before I quit talking, I want to thank Mrs. Bessie Duvon and her trio for providing dance music for us tonight. And now, go find your partners!”

Mrs. Duvon sat down at a piano on loan from a church, and she and a pair of men with fiddles launched into a lively number. Right away people started dancing.

I recognized Mr. Schieling with a woman I guessed was his wife. Then Nate whizzed by, spinning a girl with long blond hair that streamed out behind her. I wouldn’t have thought he’d know how to dance so good.

In fact, just about everybody was dancing way out of my league.