"Every so often they have to act just like little boys.

Only little boys aren't half so apt to do it." Though perhaps Wayne had been downright disappointed at not having the boat for Ann when he came home.

Was he meaning to deliver that lecture on the army?
She hoped that whatever he talked about it would bring Ann home without that strained, harassed look.
And now Katie was talking to Captain Prescott and thinking of the man who mended the boats.

Captain Prescott was a good one to be talking to when one wished to be thinking of some one else.

He called one to no dim, receding distances.
She was thinking that in everything save the things which counted most he was not unlike this other man--name unknown.