Summary

Bat’s friend, Charlie Victor, sits with a young woman named Maisie along the Thames River, enjoying each other’s company. Maisie is less proper than the other women they typically spend time with. The rest of the group gathers for a picnic after the Hampton Court outing. They discuss politics, their homelands, and various hypotheticals. They go on and on, “like bees lazily droning in the summer air. It don’t matter what the topic is, as long as words floating about, verbs, adjectives, nouns, interjections, paraphrase and paradise, the boys don’t care. It like a game, all of them throwing words in the air” (149).

Matilda and Jean smoke together and discuss marriage again. Jean is considering getting married to Harry because he has not tried to make her give up hustling and so she would still be able to...