ons surrounding garrison life after long months of enforced
abstinence in the field.

In the days of Davies's convalescence Cranston had told him of Mrs.
Barnard's call and of Brannan's story, and rejoiced that Brannan was
Miss Loomis's patient on the train, and that all through the campaign
the boy had borne himself well, and all this you may be sure did
Cranston write to Mrs. Barnard, and most gratefully was it all
acknowledged. She urged that as soon as possible now her son should be
transferred to Cranston's troop as a surer and simpler path to his
commission. After meeting and knowing the military gentlemen at
home,--people in whom she had taken no interest whatever until her
wayward son had taken to the army,--she had begun to picture him in a
staff uniform and on duty with the general at home, and, motherlike, was
eager to speed the consummation. And then Cranston's next letter told
her that her boy's best friend and adviser, Lieutenant Davies, was from
Urbana, and then very soon came the story of his engagement to Almira
Quimby, her own niece. It was then that Almira was sent for and became
Queen Paramount, for when do mothers cease to plan for wayward sons?

And now the bride was actually there in the army. The ladies had
gathered to welcome her. The band had seranaded her the night of her
arrival. The colonel and his wife, captains and lieutenants by the
dozen, came to call, most of them with their better halves, some of the
latter refined, high-bred, cultured women, some simple-mannered,
warm-hearted army girls who knew no home but the regiment, no life but
that on the plains. Some vapid, frivolous, and would-be fashionable, but
all full of kindly motive. She could have had luncheons, dinners, and
parties in her honor, and secretly moaned that it could not be, but Mr.
Davies's deep mourning prohibited. She had dined _en famille_ and in
deep constraint at the Cranstons the evening after her coming, and not
all Mrs. Cranston's cheery, chatty, cordial way, or Miss Loomis's
courtesy and tact, could put poor Almira at her ease. She was set
against them from the start, and it made the feast an ordeal which both
Cranston and Davies would gladly have eliminated from memory could they
do so. The latter had never yet spoken reprovingly to his wife, but this
night he felt that something must be said. Just in proportion as her
manner to her hostess had been unresponsive and cold so had her
assumption of little wifely ai