Straight out they swam, their heads growing smaller and smaller. There
was a slight, restless heave to the sea, and soon the three heads were
disappearing behind it with greater frequency. He strained his eyes to
keep them in sight, and finally fetched the telescope on to the veranda.
A squall was making over from the direction of Florida; but then, she and
her men laughed at squalls and the white choppy sea at such times. She
certainly could swim, he had long since concluded. That came of her
training in Hawaii. But sharks were sharks, and he had known of more
than one good swimmer drowned in a tide-rip.
The squall blackened the sky, beat the ocean white where he had last seen
the three heads, and then blotted out sea and sky and everything with its
deluge of rain. It passed on, and Berande emerged in the bright sunshine
as the three swimmers emerged from the sea. Sheldon slipped inside with
the telescope, and through the screen-door watched her run up the path,
shaking down her hair as she ran, to the fresh-water shower under the
house.
On the veranda that afternoon he broached the proposition of a chaperone
as delicately as he could, explaining the necessity at Berande for such a
body, a housekeeper to run the boys and the storeroom, and perform divers
other useful functions.
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