“Are you in the East long?” she asked.
He looked at her as if he had forgotten she was there; still, he was very polite. “No, I’m only here for a week.”
“Looking around?”
“Yes, looking around.”
“Caroline,” said Robert Holton, as though explaining an important thing, “Caroline is the belle of the office.”
“I can see that,” said Trebling without too much effort, saying it almost naturally, a hard thing to do.
“Oh, thank you,” said Caroline. Now she didn’t know what to say. She looked at his ribbons. She counted them mechanically, the way she did before the war ended: five ribbons. “You must’ve been around quite a bit,” she said finally, speaking before the silence her last words had made became another conversation.
Trebling nodded seriously. “Yes, I saw quite a bit. No more than Bob did, though.”
“That must’ve been nice,” said Caroline, “your being able to serve together everywhere.”
“Yes, it was.”