Lorna had seen May walk off into the darkness. She had seen Herb watch May go. From the way he watched her go, Lorna thought she could tell what he was thinking. When, just a while later, she saw him walk off, as if he had no other object than to see what the sky looked like from outside the circle of firelight, Lorna was sure she knew what he was up to. He was a little drunk, she knew, and might have forgotten his fetters. She felt a jab of jealousy and fear, and something that surprised her: curiosity. ...

WHEN GARTH turned thirty, May threw a birthday party for him on the beach. Guests arrived in a festive little flotilla, their boats decked out in bright bunting and paper streamers.

     Oh, it was a perfect day, just a perfect day, perfect. Clear and hot, with a light breeze, just enough to keep one from sweating unattractively. We swam, of course, and we played some ball game or other — baseball, I suppose — and we played badminton, and we played tag. That was quite a lot of fun, tag. Delicious, really. You see we’d been drinking all day, and so there was a lot of hugging and squeezing and — well — fondling involved, ...

     The beach was a wonderful place. It offered the pleasures of sea and sand and bay and the entertainments of people at their ease who are dependent on themselves and one another for their amusements. The clammies welcomed the vacationers, since they were open-handed and their pockets were deep. They liked to have a good time and did. ...

AT MAY AND GARTH’S WEDDING, Herb was best man, Lorna was matron of honor, and Ella was flower girl. As a wedding gift, Garth gave May a cottage on the beach. At that time, the narrow barrier beach across Bolotomy Bay from Babbington was only sparsely developed. Strung along the bay side were a few shacks, shelters for clamdiggers, where they could get out of the weather when the weather was foul, stay close to their work when the clamming was good, or hide out among their fellows when the door was locked at home. ...

     They drank their drinks and made plans for the wedding, and, very late, they went to their beds. Herb made such tender love to Lorna that she thought the proposal-and-acceptance scene must have touched him, and she smiled in the dark at his sentimentality. There was, however, another reason for his tenderness. ...

ONE RAINY EVENING not long after, Garth and May and Herb and Lorna were settled in front of a fire in May’s living room, and Herb was telling the story of the arrival at the showroom, that morning, of Miss Decker. “She took me by surprise,” said Herb. “She was the last person any of us ever expected to buy a car. We used to joke about it.”

     On the Babbingtonians’ final day in Chacallit, Richard and Lena served a buffet supper for everyone: Lester and Millie Piper, Luther Huber, Bertha and Richard Reuter, Clara and Harold Russell, Garth and May, Herb and Lorna.     Bertha was nervous. She was dressed in something she had made herself, without benefit of a pattern, after studying an illustration in a magazine. It was meant to be daring, but it had been an act of desperation and it looked it. Over the course of the Babbingtonians’ visit, Bertha had come to feel like a lumpy bumpkin, and she blamed this feeling on Lorna. Bertha was envious, horribly envious. ...

     May had to elude Auntie Phipps to go out with Garth. She pretended that she went out only with Herb and Lorna, but they all went off to meet Garth, and a foursome was established that would endure for more than twenty years. They went to dances at the Boat Club (which, years later, became the Yacht Club, without a noticeable increase in the size or opulence of the boats that belonged to its members). ...

HERB SOLD quite a few Studebakers. The work he had put into making himself known and respected began paying off. He began capitalizing on the store of knowledge he’d accumulated about Babbingtonians. He also had the Piper talent in such abundance that he became, in an important sense, his own best customer.

ELLA WAS ADORABLE from birth. She had the robust good health and pink plumpness that one sees in rubber baby dolls, a resilient firmness that real flesh doesn’t ordinarily exhibit, the rubber-doll bounce of bouncing babyhood. Herb was hugely proud of her. At work, he recounted each of her little triumphs. Several times. ...