...because, upon hearing him out, she sank down on the lawn in an impossible posture, examining a grass culm and frowning, he had taken his words back at once;...

Be careful: that area is tender.

Mom unpalmed her eyes and blinked at me as if she'd just realized I was there.

The attack also afforded Helena to a front-seat view of literal air-to-air melee combat, as one Wildcat pilot of the Cactus Air Force, who was swooping in to help break up the attack, found himself out of machine-gun ammo; instead, he dropped his landing gear, positioned himself above the nearest bomber, and begun beating it to death, in midair, using his landing gear as clubs. After a bit of evasive action that the fighter easily kept up with, the repeated slamming broke something important, and the bomber spiralled down into the sea.