Looking over the top of D’Arcy’s blond head to the pier-glass mirror, the off-shoulder taffeta formal gown Rachel saw plunged much too low in front. There was a world of embarrassing difference between her bust measurements and those of the nearly six feet tall, elegantly slender D’Arcy, who was kneeling before her, taking up the hem. D’Arcy was going to an immense amount of trouble to show her the best of all possible good times in Charleston, and Rachel was impressed and grateful. But a date for Saturday evening with a young Air Force major and the major’s friend—hastily recruited as Rachel’s escort for dinner, the opera, then dancing—would in all probability turn out as badly as the doubles tennis match Rachel had stumbled through that morning with two young naval officers. D’Arcy had forgotten to ask her if she played tennis; at the last moment the doubles team on the clay courts at the Charleston country club had found out that their fourth member had made the second-string swimming team at Swarthmore, but was something of a dud on dry land.
