insisted.

And at that point Saxon settled the dispute of modesty and raised a
general laugh by rippling chords on the ukulele and parodying an old
hymn in negro minstrel fashion:

"De Lawd move in er mischievous way His blunders to perform."

In the afternoon Jim Hazard and Hall dived into the breakers and swam
to the outlying rocks, routing the protesting sea-lions and taking
possession of their surf-battered stronghold. Billy followed the
swimmers with his eyes, yearning after them so undisguisedly that Mrs.
Hazard said to him:

"Why don't you stop in Carmel this winter? Jim will teach you all he
knows about the surf. And he's wild to box with you. He works long hours
at his desk, and he really needs exercise."

Not until sunset did the merry crowd carry their pots and pans and
trove of mussels up to the road and depart. Saxon and Billy watched them
disappear, on horses and behind horses, over the top of the first hill,
and then descended hand in hand through the thicket to the camp. Billy
threw himself on the sand and stretched out.

"I don't know when I've been so tired," he yawned. "An' there's one
thing sure: I never had such a day. It's worth livin' twenty years for
an' then some."

He reached out his hand to Saxon, who lay beside him.

"And, oh, I was so proud of you, Billy," she said. "I never saw you box
before. I didn't know it was like that. The Iron Man was at your mercy
all the time, and you kept it from being violent or terrible. Everybody
could look on and enjoy--and they did, too."

"Huh, I want to say you was goin' some yourself. They just took to you.
Why, honest to God, Saxon, in the singin' you was the whole show, along
with the ukulele. All the women liked you, too, an' that's what counts."

It was their first social triumph, and the taste of it was sweet:

"Mr. Hall said he'd looked up the 'Story of the Files,'" Saxon
recounted. "And he said mother was a true poet. He said it was
astonishing the fine stock that had crossed the Plains. He told me a lot
about those times and the people I didn't know. And he's read all about
the fight at Little Meadow. He says he's got it in a book at home, and
if we come back to Carmel he'll show it to me."

"He wants us to come back all right. D'ye know what he said to me,
Saxon t He gave me a letter to some guy that's down on the government
land--some poet that's holdin' down a quarter of a section--so we'll be
able to stop there, which'll come in