“Well I’m sure we thank you very kindly. What do you say, Cliff, do you think it’s right we should accept?”

It was and they did. They gathered up their things and began the long trek back, single file through the sand, Billie leading, Grandin bringing up the rear. At the foot of the stairway to the bluff, Hauman made a discovery.

“Look, a shower bath.”

“Oh, good! Where?”

“Not for you, honey, it says MEN.”

On a small platform, with a bench in front, were two open stall showers, screened by rosebushes climbing a trellis; they were marked, as Hauman had said, for the use of men only.

“That’s a rotten shame,” Billie said. “After salt bathing I feel just gritty all over.”

“There’s a shower in the bathroom,” Ethel said.

“We’ll be up in a jiffy, honey, you run on.”

The women went up the stairs and Hauman stepped into one of the stalls; a moment later his damp shorts fell with a smack on the floor outside.

“Hey,” he called out, “what am I thinking of? I can’t take a shower, I haven’t anything to put on afterwards.”

“You can wear my robe,” Grandin said, “I’ll forego the bath till later.” He slipped off his red-­cotton robe, laid it on the bench, and sat on one of the lower steps of the stairway to wait. He lighted a cigarette; this was one time when he could get away with it by himself, without having Hauman spring to light it for him.

Hauman could be heard inside the stall sloshing vigorously about. From the sounds that came forth, it was as if some obstreperous pony were being hosed down. Suddenly he broke into song—rather tunelessly, though the tune and the words were recognizable enough.

“. . . From the halls of Mon-­tuh-­zoo-­oomuh, to the shores-­of Trippo-­leee . . .”

Abruptly the song broke off as suddenly as it had begun. For some reason he had changed his mind.

Grandin wondered why. He guessed that Hauman had become self-­conscious of being overheard and had cut himself short rather than risk Grandin’s thinking he was trying to create an effect. Musing on whether or not this might be so, a whole series of pictures opened out in his imagination, in which, possibly, neophytes and cadets in boot camp, too suddenly proud of the Corps and anxious to show off, had been slapped down by marines of superior rank and longer service for indiscriminately slinging the sacred hymn about. Hauman had been one of these, and may well have been so slapped down. He was a captain now and could afford to sing the hymn where and when he pleased; but perhaps the old discipline persisted and he remembered well. Perhaps, too, he himself regarded the hymn as something sacred, to be sung in company with other marines and then only on proper occasions. . . .