yes, although only one of their number
found his tongue in time to put the matter into words. There were only
two girls when the general left that tent to meet his officers at four
o'clock, and now there were four, and the four were having five-o'clock
tea.

At least any one would have said they were four blithe girls, innocent of
graver responsibilities than social calls and dinner or dance
engagements, for never looked four young women so free from the cares of
this world as did those who were picturesquely grouped about the
General's camp table and under the brilliant reflector of the General's
lamp, but the plain gold circlet on the slender finger of the merriest
and noisiest and smallest of the four, and the fact that she had nothing
to say to the elder of the three attendant officers except in the brief,
indifferent tones of assured proprietorship, and very much to say to the
others, told a different story. The General's manner lost none of its
kindness, even though a close observer would have seen that his face lost
a little of its light as he recognized in the evident leader of the
revels and mistress of the situation the wife of his senior aide-de-camp.
An hour before he thought her a thousand miles away--and so did her
husband.

"Bless your dear old heart!" exclaimed the little lady, springing to her
feet, facing him with indomitable smiles and thrusting forward two
slender, white, bejeweled hands. "No--don't say you disapprove! Don't
scold! Don't do anything but sit right down here and have a cup of your
own delicious tea--(Frank, some boiling water)--that no one makes for you
as I do--you've owned it many a time. And then we're all going in to the
Palace for dinner and then to the theatre, and I'll tell you all about it
between the courses or between the acts. Oh, you poor dear! I ought to
have come before--you've been working yourself to death!"

And by this time, resolutely pulling, she had towed the General to a
chair, and into this, his favorite leather-armed, canvas-backed,
hickory-framed companion of many a year, she deftly dropped him and then,
giving him no chance for a word, gayly pirouetting, she seized one after
another upon each member of the party present--an accomplished little
mistress of ceremonies encased in a tailor-made traveling suit that
rendered her proof against a dozen minor ills, so beautifully was it cut
and fitted to her pretty figure--and, with inexhaustible flow of merry
words