the throng of people on the
pier. A huge black transport ship lay moored along the opposite side to
that on which the guns and troopers were embarked, and for hours bales,
boxes and barrels had been swallowed up and stored in her capacious
depths until now, over against the tables of the Red Cross, there lay
behind a rope barrier, taut stretched and guarded by a line of sentries,
an open space close under the side of the greater steamer and between the
two landing stages, placed fore and aft. By this time the north side of
the broad pier was littered with the inevitable relics of open air
lunching, and though busy hands had been at work and the tables had been
cleared, and fresh white cloths were spread and everything _on_ the
tables began again to look fair and inviting, the good fairies themselves
looked askance at their bestrewn surroundings. "Oh, if we could only move
everything bodily over to the other side," wailed Madam President, as
from her perch on a stack of Red Cross boxes she surveyed that coveted
stretch of clean, unhampered flooring.

"And why not?" chirruped Mrs. Garrison, from a similar perch, a tier or
two higher. "Here are men enough to move mountains. All we have to do is
to say the word."

"Ah, but it isn't," replied the other, gazing wistfully about over the
throng of faces, as though in search of some one sufficient in rank and
authority to serve her purpose. "We plead in vain with the
officer-of-the-guard. He says his orders are imperative--to allow no one
to intrude on that space," and madam looked as though she would rather
look anywhere than at the animated sprite above her.

"What nonsense!" shrilled Mrs. Garrison. "Here, Cherry," she called to a
pretty girl, standing near the base of the pile, "give me my bag. I'm
army woman enough to know that order referred only to the street crowd
that sometimes works in on the pier and steals." The bag was duly passed
up to her. She cast one swift glance over the heads of the crowd to where
a handsome carriage was slowly working its way among the groups of
prettily dressed women and children--friends and relatives of members of
the departing commands, in whose behalf, as though by special
dispensation, the order excluding all but soldiers and the Red Cross had
been modified. Already the lovely dark-eyed girl on the near side had
waved her hand in greeting, responding to Mrs. Garrison's enthusiastic
signals, but her companion, equally lovely, though of