“Done all right, young yachtsman,” he called over his shoulder. “Ye kin pull traps fer me anytime ye be bored or in need of a dolluh, though I don’t reckon that’s a need ye got.”

Goin’ back to Weldon, to Weldon, to Weldon …

LEATHER-VOICED Isaiah Kent sang the chantey all through the soup course (chilled cucumber) and the salad course, and now, into the main course, he was singing still in Nathaniel’s inner ear, as the voices from all around the table jostled in his outer ear: At one end, Tony Burton and Will bantered with President Eliot about the relative merits of the Yale and Harvard football squads; at the opposite end, Gertrude Williams, with earnest mien, listened to Professor Davenport discourse on his field, a new science called eugenics; in the center, directly across from Nathaniel, Van Slyck strained to sound interested in Mrs. Eliot’s review of a dramatization she had seen of Hiawatha; beside them, looking beautiful in a pearl choker and a lilac dress falling in cascades of filmy chiffon, Constance was telling Herb Wheeler about a Williams ancestor captured by Mohawks in colonial days; and on Nathaniel’s right side, Antonia Codman was delivering a monologue on the dinner. What did you think of the soup, Nat? I thought it excellent, although I prefer vichyssoise for a chilled soup.… He wasn’t just bored, he was stunningly bored, and could not understand why Antonia preferred to talk about the food rather than eat it. Most of her lobster was untouched, and he, ravenous, was sorely tempted to spear it with his fork and transfer it to his plate.

Oh, Cap’n’s got a Luger, got a Luger, got a Luuugerrr,

And the mate’s got an owl’s head …

His experience had made him the center of attention before dinner. Gertrude Williams gave him a smothering embrace for going to such lengths on her behalf, he really shouldn’t have, she’d said, and then sermonized with the fervor of a Cotton Mather against the parsimoniousness of down-easters, who could squeeze a dollar so hard it made the eagle scream. Constance and Antonia pressed him for details about what it was like to spend an entire afternoon in the company of lobstermen. The girls spoke as if they thought lobstermen were not men who fished for lobsters but a breed of hybridized and possibly dangerous beings. Combed, scrubbed, wearing his cleanest pair of duck trousers, a tie, and his Andover jacket (Father always made him and his brothers pack jackets and ties on the summer cruises, in case they took dinner in a yacht club), he answered that he’d had a fine time and that the lobstermen were fine fellows who had taught him a few things, chiefly how much a lobster was actually worth.