post.
Everybody will take care of me here! I'll just _die_ if you leave me in
Kentucky!"

"Why, darling," she said, soothingly, as she wiped her tears away and
rocked her back and forth in her arms, "I thought you have always
wanted to see mamma's old home, and the places you have heard so much
about. There are all the old toys in the nursery that we had when we
were children, and the grape-vine swing in the orchard, and the
mill-stream where we fished, and the beech-woods where we had such
delightful picnics. I thought it would be so nice for you to do all the
same things that made me so happy when I was a child, and go to school
in the same old Girls' College and know all the dear old neighbours that
I knew. Wouldn't my little girl like that?"

"Oh, yes, some, I s'pose," sobbed Virginia, "but I didn't know I'd have
to be so--so--everlastingly--civilised!" she wailed. "I don't want to
always have to dress just so, and have to walk in a path and be called
Virginia all the time. That sounds so stiff and proper. I'd rather stay
where people don't mind if I am sunburned and tanned, and won't be
scandalised at everything I do. It's so much nicer to be just
plain Ginger!"

It had been five months, now, since Virginia left Fort Dennis. At first
she had locked hen self in her room nearly every day, and, with her
face buried in her Indian suit, cried to go back. She missed the gay
military life of the army post, as a sailor would miss the sea, or an
Alpine shepherd the free air of his snow-capped mountain heights.

It was not that she did not enjoy being at her grandmother's. She liked
the great gray house whose square corner tower and over-hanging vines
made it look like an old castle. She liked the comfort and elegance of
the big, stately rooms, and she had her grandmother's own pride in the
old family portraits and the beautiful carved furniture. The negro
servants seemed so queer and funny to her that she found them a great
source of amusement, and her Aunt Allison planned so many pleasant
occupations outside of school-hours that she scarcely had time to get
lonesome. But she had a shut-in feeling, like a wild bird in a cage, and
sometimes the longing for liberty which her mother had allowed her made
her fret against the thousand little proprieties she had to observe.
Sometimes when she went tipping over the polished floors of the long
drawing room, and caught sight of herself in one of the big mirrors, she
felt that s