clerk handed me.

"Captain Raymond just left this for you Miss LaTour," he says.

I didnt even open it.

"Kindly return it," I says, very dignified, giving it back, and looked
over my other mail. But no letter from my husband, which is always the
way on a day a woman most needs one. So I went upstairs very low in my
mind and sort of glad that even if Jim couldn't think to write there was
others would be glad enough to if they was let. And then I went and got
Maison out of bed which she was taking her breakfast in.

"You come down here for your health and look what you do to it!" I says,
and made her go for a boardwalk which she held out for about half a hour
and no wonder with the heels she wears, and then stopped me with a gasp.

"Dearie, you surely must be the one that put the hell in health," she
says, "For heavens sakes leave us sit down."

Well we did, and in about five minutes along comes Mr. Freddy with a
friend, Mr. Sternberg, and it was remarkable how quick Maison recovered
her strength, with the result that we spent a quiet little morning and
about fifty dollars of Mr. Sternberg's money on shooting-galleries and
throwing rings and carousels and a Japanese auction and other restful
seaside sports, and ended at a quiet little cafe simply done in paper
roses and rubber palm trees where the drinks was only seventy-five
cents per each and I had to sit and watch them again, Ma having gone
off to exercise and not appearing to want me along with her.

Well anyways I was sort of relieved over not having to eat lunch with
Captain Raymond looking on back at the hotel, and was just thinking of
it when who would come into that cafe but the Captain himself, alone
except for another officer, a Lieutenant with his arm in a sling and
caught sight of me the very minute he sat down.

Well of course I didnt look over at him but I couldnt help noticing he
called a waiter and wrote a note on a piece of paper and that the waiter
brought it over to me.

And Maison seen it too, and her gentleman friends the same, and did they
kid me? They did! But I kept the bird which had brought the note over
while I tore it in two without reading it and sent it back again that
way and believe you me that got over, because I could see Captain
Raymond turn red all the way across the noisy room.

Well I thought that had settled it and spent a mournful if busy
afternoon in another cafe where there was lots of smoke and a Jazz band
and danci