suddenly and
deliriously I felt two soft, cool arms enfold me, and my head sank
back on a delicately unholstered shoulder. Somehow it reminded me of
the old days.

"Home, James," I murmured, as I was slowly towed to shore. Just before
closing my eyes I caught a fleeting glimpse of a young lady clad in
one of the one-piecest one-piece bathing suits I had ever seen. She
was bending over me sympathetically.

"Private property!" cried my tormentor, shaking a finger at me. "What
a pity!" I thought as I closed my eyes and drifted off into sweet
dreams in which Mr. Fogerty, my beautiful rescuer, and myself were
dancing hand-and-hand on the parade ground to the music of the massed
band, much to the edification of the entire station assembled in
review formation.

Presently I awoke to the hateful strains of this old hard-shell's
voice:

"See what you've done!" she was saying to the young girl. "You've
brought in a half naked man, and now that he has seen you in a much
worse condition than he is, we'll have ten thousand sailors swimming
out to this island in one continuous swarm."

"Oh, won't that be fun!" cried the girl. And from that time on, in
spite of the objections of her mother, we were fast friends.

When I returned to shore it was in a rowboat with this fair young
creature. The faithful Fogerty was waiting on the beach for me, where,
it later developed, he had been sleeping quite comfortably on an
unknown woman's high powered sport hat, as is only reasonable.

_July 2nd._ Mother got in again. There seems to be no practical way of
keeping her out. This time she came breezing in with a friend from
East Aurora, a large, elderly woman of about one hundred and ten
summers and an equal number of very hard winters. The first thing
mother said was to the effect that she was going to see what she could
do about getting me a rating. She did. The very first officer she saw
she sailed up to and buttonholed much to my horror.

"Why can't my boy Oswald have a pretty little eagle on his arm, such
as I see so many of the young men up here wearing about the camp?"

The abruptness of this question left the officer momentarily stunned,
but I will say for him that he rallied quickly and returned a
remarkably diplomatic reply to the effect that the pretty little
eagle, although pleasing to gaze upon, was not primarily intended to
be so much of a decoration as means of identification, and that
certain small qualifications were r