Bridie jerked her hat, which she had worn throughout lunch, she straightened herself in her chair, she sniffed. “I live in one room in the Ice Palace. From choice. I’d think two rooms a burden. I’ve got six dinner plates, six cups and saucers, six glasses, six salads, six soups, six knives and forks—and so on, and two luncheon sets I got that time I was in Hawaii, they’re as good as the day I—–”

Crisply Christine cut in. “Can’t come to dinner tomorrow night, thanks, Aunt Louise. I’m going to the sorority dance, it’s the big dance of the year.”

“With Bay?”

“I did ask him. Just to hear what he’d say. He said he didn’t go to children’s parties because chicken-and-sweet-bread patties and chocolate ice cream didn’t agree with him.”

“What did he mean?”

“Nothing. He invited me to drive out to Spruce with him and eat dinner at Fishermen’s Wharf.”

“You going?”

“Ross Guildenstern’s going to be here.” Now Bridie looked up, sharply. “I’ve invited him, I wired him, I haven’t seen him in months and months and months.”

“I’d think,” Bridie suggested, “there’d be plenty of nice boys right here in Seattle, wouldn’t have to be imported.”

Ross Guildenstern telephoned from the airport five minutes after his plane had landed.

“Chris!”

“Ross! I don’t know why I even speak to you. I haven’t heard from you for months. That’s why I started running after you.”

“See, the guy was right, absence does make them come whimpering.”

“Eight o’clock, and some of the kids are meeting here for a drink first, so come early.”

“I had my tux pressed—–”

“Don’t call it tux.”

“Dinner clothes, Seattle. Dinner clothes. Anyway, it makes no difference because I tried it on, I haven’t worn it in four years, and I’d be arrested. Inches too small.”

“Rent one. You have to wear dinner clothes, it’s the one very important party—–”

“I won’t disgrace you. I hope. I’ll rent one with stripes down the side of the pants and everything.”

The rented suit looked frightful on him, though Chris did not say so. He was too muscular, too stockily built, too square-shouldered to look his best in evening clothes; rented evening clothes. But he turned out to be a hit. The young men and women, clustered around him, seemed to find in this olive-skinned smiling young man a certain frankness and freshness that had attracted them to Christine.

“Where do you live, Mr.—uh—Guild—no! Not really Guildenstern! Like in—I love it!”

“I live in Baranof—that is, when I’m on the ground.… No, I was born in an Eskimo village called Oogruk, it’s on the Bering Strait.… Now it’s quite a town.… No, we don’t live in igloos.… In Baranof I live at the Ice Palace, most of the pilots … it’s an apartment hotel … no, Alaska isn’t what you think, you ought to come to Alaska some time.…”

At the end of the evening, “You going to stay here, Chris?”

“I’m going to finish, of course.”