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sitting alone, watched it all. They’d turn him into a fighter pilot, all right. If he had the stuff. He’d walk into the briefing room one day like the rest of them with a rolled-up newspaper in his back pocket and picking his teeth. Gentlemen all and the world’s best.
    â€œGo ahead and finish your breakfast,” Isbell said when the major had gone. “He was only pulling your leg.”
    â€œI’m . . . it’s OK,” Cassada said.
    â€œGo ahead and have your breakfast.”
    Cassada looked at him for a moment with a cool, unbothered eye. Then he looked away.
    â€œThat’s all right, Captain,” he said.
    Wickenden saw it clearly. More than clearly. He could see right through this one.

The first Saturday night after coming home there was a party at the club. Nearly everyone came. Mayann Dunning was sitting at the bar when Dumfries and his wife in what looked like her communion dress came in. They were almost the last ones and wandered along the big table trying to decide which places were taken.
    â€œWe’re late,” Dumfries said to Mayann. “Where is everybody?”
    â€œIn the other room.”
    â€œWhat’s going on?”
    â€œYes, what’s happening?” Laurie asked in a little voice.
    â€œThey got a new singer while you were away,” Mayann said. “At least that’s what she’s supposed to be.”
    â€œAren’t you going in?” Dumfries asked.
    â€œNo, I’ve already seen her.”
    â€œI guess I’ll have a look.”
    â€œWhere are you going?” Laurie asked.
    â€œI’ll be right back.”
    â€œWe just got here.”
    â€œLet him go,” Mayann said. “You wouldn’t want him to miss it, would you?”
    She and Dunning had met in college. She was, at the time, grey-eyed and unknowable though not shy. She was the daughter of a pharmacist and had been given the combined name of both grandmothers. She had inherited, in addition, her mother’s outspokenness, one might even say boldness. It was known that she had remarked of the wing commander’s wife that she would be a wonderful woman if she ever told the truth. Had this reached the wrong ears it could have been damaging. Some things are unpardonable but Mayann was bored.
    She should have been born a man, she often felt, been one of them instead of talking all the time about how terrible the maids were and why didn’t they shave under their arms. She should have had hard legs to swagger on and slim hips.
    Laurie had resigned herself to sitting with Mrs. Dunning who she felt looked down on her somehow although it should have been the other way around, the things you heard. It was not long before the music stopped and everyone began coming back in. Two drinks in one hand and a cigar in the other, wearing a string tie and an expression of amusement, Dunning came to the bar. He set one of the drinks, the ice in it nearly melted, in front of his wife.
    â€œDid you get enough of it?” she said.
    â€œHo, ho,” he said.
    â€œWhat does that mean?”
    â€œShe’s too much for any of these boys.”
    â€œWell, that rules you out.”
    Dunning only smiled.
    Marian Isbell, coming up behind him, was irritated. They had been away for a whole month, she complained, and when they finally got back some fraulein was all they were interested in.
    â€œTommy find that interesting?” Mayann said.
    â€œYou’d think they had more sense than to hire a girl like that.”
    â€œI don’t think they hired her.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œShe’s with the band.”
    â€œYou should have seen Ferguson. He certainly was sitting up all of a sudden.”
    Isbell joined them.
    â€œMarian says she likes the singer,” Mayann said.
    â€œFerguson likes her.”
    â€œDon’t lay it all on Ferguson,” Marian said.
    â€œHe’s apparently more interested in music than we