"She might be twenty-five, she might be twenty-eight . . . "
But Stanley Patterson had impolitely forgotten to listen.
"It's not her legs alone," he cried on enthusiastically. "It's the
all of her. Look at the delicacy of that forearm. And the swell
of line to the shoulder. And that biceps! It's alive. Dollars to
drowned kittens she can flex a respectable knot of it . . . "
No woman, much less an Ida Barton, could have been unconscious of
the effect she was producing along Waikiki Beach. Instead of
making her happy in the small vanity way, it irritated her.
"The cats," she laughed to her husband. "And to think I was born
here an almost even third of a century ago! But they weren't nasty
then. Maybe because there weren't any tourists. Why, Lee, I
learned to swim right here on this beach in front of the Outrigger.
We used to come out with daddy for vacations and for week-ends and
sort of camp out in a grass house that stood right where the
Outrigger ladies serve tea now. And centipedes fell out of the
thatch on us, while we slept, and we all ate poi and opihis and raw
aku, and nobody wore much of anything for the swimming and
squidding, and there was no real road to town.
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