pale with anxiety and caused Colonel Ray to look up startled as he read
it, to go over and take his wife in his arms, lead her to the sofa, and
hold her close as he went on with the final pages--a boy's rhapsody over
a boy's first love:

MY OWN MUMMIE:--Not until I could send you the inclosed, the
portrait, and by no means flattering one, of the loveliest girl
that ever lived, could I write to tell you of my almost delirious
happiness. But _look_ at her--_look_ at her, and see for yourself
and rejoice with me, best, blessedest, dearest of mothers, that
this exquisite creature loves me--_me_, your no 'count, ranch boy
Sandy--loves _me_, and will soon, please God, be my own wife.
Mother, mother, I have hardly slept in my wild joy, and now I can
hardly wait for your approval and blessing. Dad will love and
admire her, I know, but mothers, they say, never think any woman
good enough for their boys, while I--I could kiss the very ground
she treads so lightly. I almost worship the very glove she left me
for a souvenir.

As yet I can't quite realize my wondrous luck. Why, Mummie, the
other fellows were simply mad about her during her brief stay at
Manila. Quite a lot of us, you know, were ordered there when poor
Jack Bender was court-martialed. He got a stay of proceedings of
some kind, so while the witnesses should have been back with
General Young here, they were dancing attendance on her, and the
way I got the inside track was, when her parents had to go over to
Japan, I coaxed a ten days' leave out of the General and went with
them--her father, mother and her own sweet self--on the _Hancock_
to Nagasaki, and came back desolate on the--I don't know what.

I met her at a dance at the Club. She attracted me the instant I
set eyes on her, so like is she to Maidie, only darker, perhaps,
and taller, and a bit more slender. But her eyes, hair, teeth,
coloring, are all so like Maidie's. Her features, perhaps, are more
regular. Shannon, of the Twenty-third, was doing the devoted, and
he presented me. She danced like a sylph, she danced right into my
heart, Mummie, and there she lives and reigns and has her being--my
queen! my queen!

Oh, what nonsense this must sound to you! All my wise resolutions
as to young men marrying on lieutenant's pay thrown to the wind!