"On time for once," she exclaimed triumphantly with a glance at the clock. "But I couldn't have been if Roberta hadn't come to the rescue.

She brought me down in their carriage. It's Roberta Mayrell," she explained, as they made their way as rapidly as possible down the crowded aisle.

"She isn't really one of the Army girls, but she lives just outside the Post and has always been counted in everything there, since she was old enough to talk. I've been telling her all about you on the way down."

"Well, I hope she'll find me as interesting as the alligators," began Mary, remembering the speech she had overheard from the hotel balcony.

But Gay was stopping to apologize to an old lady whom she had b.u.mped into, and did not hear the remark. The next moment they were outside and at the curbstone, where a carriage drawn by two Kentucky horses was in waiting, and Roberta was stepping down with outstretched hands to welcome her.

Roberta at close range was even more fascinating than when seen from a hotel balcony, and Mary, sitting between the two girls as they drove along towards Government Hill, had much the same feeling that a thirsty Bedouin has when after miles of desert journeying he finds himself beside the well of a green oasis.

They were fairly bubbling over with high spirits, and it was impossible to be with them and not share their exhilaration. Before they had gone two blocks the weight of care and anxiety that had been resting on Mary's shoulders ever since Jack's accident, began to slip off. It almost gave her a sense of having wings, to be so light and care free.

The last eight months with their constant a.s.sociation with suffering and anxiety about finances had been like a hard march through the sands. Now the sudden subst.i.tution of something frivolous and young was so refreshing that she giggled almost hysterically in her enjoyment of it.

"Oh, we forgot to tell you," exclaimed Gay as they came in sight of the parade grounds. "There's to be a hop at the gymnasium to-night for the visiting polo team. They got it up on short notice. Lieutenant Boglin told me about it when I invited him to come to dinner. He asked if he might take you, and I said he might, for of course you won't want to miss it, and old Bogey is quite the nicest officer in the bunch when it comes to giving a girl a good time."

Mary's face wore such a comical expression of blended delight and dismay that Roberta laughed, and Gay stopped the refusal that Mary was beginning to stammer out by putting both hands over her ears.

"No, I won't listen," she declared. "Of course you didn't expect to do anything like this, and didn't bring the proper clothes, but it is such an informal affair that it doesn't make any difference. Roberta and I can rig you out in something of mine. It will be all the more fun."

"Oh, it's just the larkiest lark that ever was!" exclaimed Mary so excited over the prospect that her cheeks were growing redder and redder, and her eyes shining with happy antic.i.p.ation.

"This day has been full of thrills, and--oo, oo! There goes another!"

she added with a little shiver of delight as the band began to play. The carriage had stopped at the end of the parade ground, where the usual crowd of spectators was gathered.

"Martial music always sends cold shivers up and down my back," she said gravely. "It makes me want to cheer and march right off to do something big and brave--'storm the heights,' or bleed and die for my country, or something of that sort. I've always thought that I'd have been a soldier if I hadn't been born a girl."

She laughed as she said it, but there was a quiver of earnestness in her voice. Parade was a matter-of-course affair to Gay and Roberta, a part of the weekly routine of Post life, which familiarity made ordinary.

They exchanged amused glances which Mary did not see, and made remarks and criticisms on the manoeuvres which she did not hear. Wholly absorbed, she leaned forward in the carriage, watching every movement of the drill.

It is always an inspiring sight, even to one who looks no farther than the outward show, admiring the clock-like precision which makes a battalion move as one man; but to Mary every khaki coat in the regiment clothed a hero. Lexington and Valley Forge, Gettysburg and Chickamauga called to her through every drum-beat and bugle note.

She had loved her old dog-eared copy of the History of the United States, and many a time had spread it out on her desk to re-read, when she should have been studying other things. She had pored over its stories of war till the black and white of its printed pages had transformed her into a little fire-ball of a patriot. Now as she saw for the first time these men who stood as the guardians of "Old Glory,"

everything she had ever read of heroism and blood-stained battle-fields and glorious dying, came back to her in a flood of enthusiasm which nearly lifted her to her feet. When at last the band struck into "The Star-spangled Banner" and the guns fired the signal which heralded the lowering of the colors, her plain little face was almost transfigured with the exalted emotions of the moment.

"Aye, call it holy ground, The soil that they have trod,"

she was repeating to herself, when she became aware that Roberta was trying to attract her attention, and was holding out a box of candy.

"Come down to earth!" she exclaimed laughingly. "I tried to get you to take some earlier in the action, but you hadn't eyes for anything but the bra.s.s b.u.t.tons. I don't believe you would have heard thunder!"

"It wasn't bra.s.s b.u.t.tons I was seeing," began Mary. "It was--" Then realizing the utter hopelessness of trying to explain what soul-stirring visions had been hers for that little s.p.a.ce of time that the band played and the heroes of the past as well as the present pa.s.sed before her, she did as Roberta advised, came down to earth and took a caramel.

When they reached Major Melville's house in the officers' quarters, Roberta dismissed the carriage and went in with Gay and Mary. She had decided not to change her dress for the hop, she said as she threw off her long cloak in the hall, revealing the pretty frock of pink and gray foulard which she had worn at the luncheon.

Mrs. Melville came out to meet them, a large sandy-haired woman with a certain faded fairness and enough of a resemblance to Gay to suggest what she might have looked like in her teens. Her cordial welcome put Mary at ease at once, and she followed the girls up the broad staircase, feeling that this visit was quite the most delightful thing which had happened to her since she left Warwick Hall.

While Gay rummaged through trunks and wardrobes to find party raiment for her guest, Mary walked about the room, experiencing more thrills at every turn; for on each wall and book-shelf and bracket was some picture or souvenir of Warwick Hall or Lloydsboro Valley.

"Oh, there's Lloyd and Betty and the Walton girls!" she cried. "I have this same picture at home, and one like this of Madam Chartley too, in her high-back chair with the carved griffins on it.

"What a splendid picture this is of Dr. Alex Shelby," she called a moment later. Then catching sight of a larger one on the mantel in a silver frame, she exclaimed in surprise, "Why, you have two of Doctor Alex."

Gay was deep in a closet, her head between rows of dress-skirts, and she made no answer; but Roberta, perching in the window-seat, cleared her throat to attract Mary's attention, and then with an impish smile held up seven fingers and pointed in different directions to five other photographs that Mary had not yet discovered.

"One for each day in the week," she said in a low tone. "I'd give a good deal to see that man. He was here last spring, but I was down on the coast and missed him. I intend to make a point of staying at home next time he comes. I want to see for myself what's up. Gay pretends there isn't anything, but I have my own ideas."

"Oh, is he coming again?" cried Mary.

Roberta's only answer was a significant nod, for Gay emerged from the closet just then.

"There's nothing in there," she announced, "but I've just thought of one that Lucy left here this spring. I'll ask mother where it is."

"You see," said Roberta as the door closed behind Gay, "I wouldn't tease her if she'd confess anything, but she won't. Kitty Walton thinks I've guessed right too. She said that from the moment she heard about their romantic meeting she was sure something would come of it."

"Oh, tell me about it," urged Mary. "I know Doctor Alex so well that I can't help being interested."

"And do you know a place in Lloydsboro Valley called the Log Cabin?"

asked Roberta. "A fine country home built of logs and furnished with beautiful old heirlooms? Gay's sister, Mrs. Harcourt, rented it one summer."

"Indeed I do know it," a.s.sented Mary. "It is a fascinating place, with a big outside fire-place on the porch, and the front is covered with a climbing rose. We used to pa.s.s it often."

"Well, Kitty says that the day after the Harcourts took possession, Gay put a ladder against the front of the house and climbed up on it to hang a mirror on the outside of her window-sill, the way they do in Holland.

It was one she had brought all the way from Amsterdam. And while she was up on the ladder, looking like a picture, of course, with the roses all about her and the sunshine turning her hair to gold, Dr. Shelby came by on horseback. She saw him in the mirror and the girls teased her about it--called it her Lady of Shalott mirror and him her Knight of the Looking-gla.s.s. Kitty says he was devotion itself to her all summer."

What more she might have revealed was interrupted by Gay's return. She tossed an armful of dainty muslin and lace on the bed, and for a few moments all three gave their undivided attention to the trying-on process.

"I must confess it doesn't look as if it were fitted to you in perfect health," confessed Roberta, "but it's one of those soft clinging things that doesn't have to fit like a glove. I can pin it up on you to make it look all right, and it's so pretty with all that fine lace and embroidery that it'll pa.s.s muster anywhere."

Gay sat down to make some slight alteration in the girdle, while Roberta invited Mary to a seat in front of the dressing-table, proposing to try her skill on her as a hair-dresser. It was all so delightfully intimate and friendly, just such a situation as Mary had longed for in her dream-castle building, that she even felt at liberty to grow a little personal with Roberta. She peeped out through the hair which now hung over her face, to watch Roberta's face reflected in the mirror opposite.

"Do you know," she remarked with a mischievous glance, like a skye terrier peeping through its bangs, "that I've actually lain awake nights, wondering if you'd been persuaded yet to give up that 'adorable little curl.'"

Roberta's mouth opened wide in astonishment, and she dropped the comb with which she was parting Mary's hair.

"How spooky!" she cried. "I was just thinking about that myself. Who in the world told you anything about that?"

"Oh, I overheard the remark," confessed Mary. "I was on one of those hotel balconies all hidden by moon-vines when you and Gay and Mr. Wade and the officer you call Bogey came out into the court. I was so lonesome for some young person to talk to, and so close to you all that I could see the comb slipping out of Gay's hair. I didn't know who she was then. If I had I should have leaned over the railing and called to her. Wouldn't it have made a sensation?

"I'll never forget how either of you looked. She was in white with white violets, and you were in pale lemon yellow with a scarf over your shoulders that looked like a white moonbeam spangled with dewdrops. It slipped down as you started to go and see the alligators, and that Mr.

Wade drew it up for you and said what he did about the curl."

"That was the first time he ever mentioned it," explained Roberta. "I thought when you spoke that you meant last night. I was going to tell Gay about it, and as long as you're so interested I don't mind telling you, too. You know Mr. Wade has been very nice to me, and I thought he was great fun until he began to get sentimental. My brother William knew him at college, and he told me what I might expect. He said 'that chap always gets sentimental with every girl he goes with.' It's a great thing to have plenty of brothers to put you wise.

"When Mr. Wade began that nonsense about wanting one of those little curls and its being the most fetching thing he had ever seen I laughed at him. But it only made him the more determined. He wrote some poetry about wearing it over his heart forever and all that sort of thing. If he only could have known how Billy and I shrieked over it! Of course I hadn't given him the slightest encouragement, or it would have been different--"

"Roberta," interrupted Gay sternly, "how can you say that? You know you looked at him. I saw you do it. And when you look out at anybody from under those lashes, whether you mean it or not you _do_ look flirtatious, and you know it."

"I don't!" contradicted Roberta hotly, with boyish directness. "I can't help the way my lashes are kinked, and I'm very sure I'm not going to pull them out to keep people from getting a wrong impression. Anyhow there's no kink in my tongue! I told him straight enough what I thought of his silly speeches. I put a stop to them last night, all right."