"We ask if he is in the navy," I answered.

She laughed again at that, quite as though I had said something
clever.

"And you are not?"

"No," I said, "I am in Joyce & Carboy's office. I am a
stenographer."

Again my answer seemed both to puzzle and to surprise her. She
regarded me doubtfully. I could see that she thought, for some
reason, I was misleading her.

"In an office?" she repeated. Then, as though she had caught me,
she said: "How do you keep so fit?" She asked the question
directly, as a man would have asked it, and as she spoke I was
conscious that her eyes were measuring me and my shoulders, as
though she were wondering to what weight I could strip.

"It's only lately I've worked in an office," I said. "Before that
I always worked out-of-doors; oystering and clamming and, in the
fall, scalloping. And in the summer I played ball on a hotel
nine."

I saw that to the beautiful lady my explanation carried no meaning
whatsoever, but before I could explain, the young man with whom she
had come on board walked toward us.

Neither did he appear to find in her talking to a stranger anything