a kid at thirty. What did you do after
breakfast?"

"After breakfast I went up to see Colonel Blenner, and found him on his
veranda smoking his after-breakfast cigar before he went over to
guard-mount. He was genial as ever; except that he put his foot down on
an engagement. 'An engagement means a marriage, or should,' he says,
'and how can you marry on an ensign's pay? You with your mess bills and
other expenses aboard ship, and Doris with her quarters ashore--you
would never meet your bills.'

"I agreed with him, but also argued with him, and shook him some, but
could not quite upset him. I left him to run back to the hotel to throw
my things together. And there I found a new complication--orders were
waiting me. I was to be detached from my ship and to take command of
the gunboat _Bayport_--and a rust-eaten old kettle of a _Bayport_ she
was, famous for her disabilities; and I was to sail for Manila next
morning at eight o'clock. Manila! Another jolt. I sat down and thought
it out.

"And when I got talking to myself again, I said: 'Doris Blenner, you're
a great girl--the best ever; but you're not superhuman. No man has a
right to expect a girl to be that. You're too lovable, too human, Doris,
to be the superhuman kind. I'll be away in the East Lord knows how
long--another two years perhaps--and there's all those army chaps always
on the job. We'll just have to be married, that's all there is to that,
before I leave.'

"I was back to the post in time to join a riding-party after lunch. It
was no use my trying to see her alone riding. But after the ride we
slipped out onto the ramparts of the fort, and there, the pair of us
sitting hand in hand and a sentry a dozen paces away trying not to see
and hear us, I told her of my orders and then entered my new plea. 'All
for myself, Doris,' I told her. By that time the sun was low behind us
and throwing our two shadows onto where the water of the bay came
gurgling up against the walls of the fort, and looking down on our
shadows from the fort walls, she said at last she would marry me before
I left, if papa agreed--and glad one minute and sad the next, we walked
back in the twilight.

"Colors had sounded when we got back, and the colonel was dressing for
dinner; but after dinner I took him out for a walk. Three laps we made
around the drill-ground and then, halting him under the clump of willows
down by the outer walls, I plumped it at him--what it meant to be away
for