Dart’s leter begins with a gripe about how Navy life allows no privacy for a fellow. He also explains that they’re going into another mail black-out.

He had two letters from Dot today, written in early June when Nancy was her house guest. Now he knows the reason for her lack of letters recently. “The idea — a girl keeping her best friend (and hostess) from writing letters!” He says he’ll have to write that girl a scolding letter.

Today is his parents’ 25th wedding anniversary. He claims a happier couple cannot be found and he prays that he and Dot will have a marriage every bit as happy. From the surface when I was young, it always looked like Helen and Dart, Sr. had a hard life. Dart’s health was delicate after serving in France in WW I, he was never able to get very good jobs. They never owned their own home, sometimes even having to move in with relatives for years at a time. They lost their first child – a daughter – just hours after she was born. Still, I remember as a child watching the joy they found in each other. They laughed together, bragged about each other, and looked at each other with tenderness and love. They were always so proud of the life Dot and Dart built together – of my Dad’s career, Mom’s domestic skills, their three delightful children. I always knew my grandparents loved me and loved each other deeply. In short, I’d say that Dart, Jr. got his wish, to have a marriage as happy as his folks’.

From reading Dot’s letters of this timeframe, he judges that it may be a while before he hears her answer to the one he wrote in late May.

While it sounds like Dot is enjoying plenty of movies these days, he is not. Most of the ones they get on the ship are years old and not especially good. He rarely attends them. “We all hope that eventually we’ll drop the hook in a harbor where ‘security’ will again permit the movies to be shown topside instead of in a hot, stuffy mess hall.”

He addresses “the Jamey incident,” in which Dot told him of the smarmy friend of her sister’s who came on to her at a dinner party in a very inappropriate way. “I’m fully aware that a girl as attractive as you could not possibly go through life without having a few incidents like that. It must have been terribly embarrassing to you, and you acted most admirably in it. Another of the ‘reasons’ you asked for in that letter; my faith that you know and do the right thing, and that you’ll not disappoint me or let me down.”

She’s doing quite well on the war bond sale and he’s proud of her. He also envies the cooler temperatures she’s experiencing in Greenwich. (Don’t we always like the sound of somebody else’s weather better than our own?)

Dot’s dreams intrigue him. The outfit she saw him wearing in a recent dream was nearly identical to his regular “date night” outfit that he wore in his civilian days. “How’d you manage to dream a dream like that?”

The letter has a strong finish: “Dot, you continue to amaze me. Sometime I’ll tell you all the reasons, or at least a good part of them. Let it suffice now for me to say I love you always, and will miss your letters terribly for a while.”

Dot’s scant two-page letter is mostly about how there’s nothing to write about, but she slips a few tidbits in, nonetheless. She congratulates Dart on being the son who has parents celebrating their 25th anniversary. She never did hear from Burke about her offer to help with their gift, but she hopes he managed on his own and was still home to help them celebrate.

She wonders if it’s cruel to gloat about the first watermelon of the season that she ate today — delicious! It may be mean to taunt a sailor that way, but what else does a girl have to write about?

How about the weather? Last week, they were wearing winter suits and hugging themselves to keep warm. Today, Greenwich hit a sweltering 90 degrees! She’s so hot that her glasses keep fogging over. She has to wear them down on the tip of her nose, but her nose is so square that they pinch. “Every once in a while I have to come up for air.”

Her only real news is that she drove the car all by herself tonight, up and down the long driveway. She was doing fine until she dug up the flower bed with the rear bumper and deposited it elsewhere.

“If I promise to think about you lots before I go to sleep may I stop now? I’m so hot and tired it’s pathetic.”