I'll arrange a plan, and, as
soon as Vincent goes--we'll be off."

"I'm not your master, you young hornet; I can't see what you're doing
all the time. All I can do is to approve or reject such doings of yours
as you bring me to decide on."

Dick's eyes sparkled. "All right, I'll keep you posted, never fear."

They were a very jovial group that prattled about the long Rosedale
dining-table daily now, since every one was able to come down. The house
was furnished in the easy unpretentiousness that prevailed in the South
in other days. Cool matting covered all the floors, the hallways, and
bedchambers. The dining-room opened into a drawing-room, where Kate and
Olympia took turns at the big piano. The day was divided, English
fashion, into breakfast, luncheon, dinner, and supper, the latter as
late as nine o'clock in the night. Jack being unprovided with
regimentals, Vincent wore civilian garb, to spare the "prisoner" (as
Jack jocosely called himself) mortification. Gray was the "only wear"
obtainable in Richmond, Mrs. Atterbury enjoying with gentle malice the
rueful perplexities of her prisoner guests, Jack, Wesley, and Richard,
as they surrounded the board in this rebel attire.

"I shall feel as uncertain of myself when I get back to blue, as I do in
chess, after I have played a long while with the black, changing to
white. I manoeuvre for some time for the discarded color," Jack said,
one evening.

"Oh, you'll hardly forget in this case," Rosa said, saucily; "it is for
the blacks you are manoeuvring constantly."

Jack looked up, startled, and glanced swiftly at Dick. Had that
headstrong young marplot been detected in treason with the colored
people? No. Dick met his glance clear-eyed, unconstrained. The shot must
have been a random one.

"I think you do us injustice, Miss Rosa," Wesley said. "I, for one, am
not interested in the blacks. All I want is the Union; after that I
don't care a rush!"

"I protest against politics," Mrs. Atterbury intervened, gently. "When I
was a girl the young people found much more interesting subjects than
politics."

Rosa: "Crops, mamma?"

Vincent: "A mistress's eyebrow?"

Dick: "Some other fellow's sister?"

Olympia: "Some other girl's brother?"

Mrs. Sprague: "Giddy girls?"

Merry: "Bad boys?"

"Well, something about all of these," Mrs. Atterbury resumed, laughing.
"I don't think young people in these times are as attached to each other
as we used to be in our day--do