"Could be," Dawson laughed. "California's full of things you'd never believe unless you saw them. But don't toss the weather at me, pal. I'm not a native of this state, so you can't get a rise out of me. Anyway, what the heck are you crabbing about? No good weather, no flying. And that gives us a chance to catch up on something or other. Now, take this book I'm reading. I ..." "You take it, and keep it!" Freddy Farmer growled. "You know, Dave, you amaze me at times. Blessed if you're not as unpredictable as one of Hitler's speeches. Really." "Yeah?" Dawson grinned at him. "How come? Add a few more words to that, will you?" "With pleasure!" young Farmer snapped. "Some two or three weeks ago, when we were included in a bunch of pilots and such to be sent from England to America to help train Army and Navy pilots, you just about hit the roof. Why, you were fit to go down to American Air Forces H. Q. in London and tear the blasted place apart. You train fledglings to fly? Never, you declared! You belly-ached night and day. Why, when we arrived here and you learned that we'd been assigned to Naval Aviation, you went completely off the deep end. You were an Army flier, a fighter pilot, and all that sort of rot. And now, suddenly, you're as content as a bug in a rug. Blessed if I get it, Dave? Or did the commandant of the base here overhear a few of your remarks, and call you up before him for a blistering?" "Nope, not that," Dawson said with a chuckle. "That I have calmed down, and am relaxed, is simply the result of another one of my sterling qualities that you have overlooked. I mean, the ability to adjust myself to existing circumstances." "Oh, quite!" Freddy Farmer jeered at him. "Particularly when you know blasted well that you can't do a thing about them!" "Well, maybe you've got something there, pal," Dawson murmured, and stared at the rain-swept windows. "When I'm posted to some job I don't go for at all, I sound off just as a matter of habit. I really don't kid myself that my objections are going to change anything. You and I have been in this cockeyed war too long to think that everything is all cut and dried. It isn't. And it never will be. In war anything can happen, and you can bet your last dime that it will, eventually. So I just get the steam off my chest, then say, oh, what the heck, and let it go like that." "I see what you mean," young Farmer grunted. "And I'll admit that I feel much the same way. Only I keep my thoughts to myself. Commanding officers have big ears, you know. And it would just be the Farmer luck to have my words reach one of those big ears. But this blasted rain!" "A buck says that there won't be a cloud in the sky at the end of a couple of hours," Dawson said. "California's like that. But now that we're letting down our hair, I gather that you're not so hot for this instructing job, either, huh?"