er hobby, as he called it, and with
preternatural gravity "drawing her out" as to the chief end of man.
Somebody had told him of her Anti-Canteen and Soldiers' Aid Association
at Minneconjou--and of its disruption, but he never twitted her as to
that. It was the new scheme for the higher education and mental
development of the soldier to which her energies were now bending, and
as Blake was in town with little to do but nurse a wounded leg and serve
on some perennial court-martial, he found his fun in frequent
disquisitions with Priscilla, sometimes prolonging them until Mrs. Ray
lost patience and drove him homeward, and privately wrote her liege
lord, who was forever afield, running down _ladrones_, that he really
must repress that irrepressible wag. "He isn't trying to flirt with
Pris, is he?" asked Ray, inconsequently, on coming home, and was dull
enough not to catch the full force of his wife's reply. "Flirt? Gerald
Blake never knew how, and he's too much in love with his wife;
and--besides----"

Priscilla was far too serious to flirt with any man, much as she might
long to reform him. She did wish that the long, lank cavalryman could be
induced to take her views as seriously as she took them herself, and as
Major Dwight seemed to take them, for Dwight's letters were coming at
regular intervals, and to Miss Sanford now rather than to Marion Ray,
and for a time Priscilla read them aloud for the benefit of Blake, the
scoffer, and that of Aunt Marion and Uncle Will, the ever-indulgent. And
thus that warm, sunshiny Manila winter went its way and the summer rains
began to flood the streets, and people took to aquatics, and excursions
to Nagasaki and Yokohama; and thither flitted our friends, the elder
Rays, with Blake to see them off, and a promise to keep Miss 'Cilla's
library project moving. And the day the transport dropped them into
waiting sampan in Nagasaki's wondrous harbor two packages of home
letters were handed them by the resident quartermaster, just received by
rail from Yokohama and the Nippon Maru, and that evening, on the broad
white veranda of the old hotel, Priscilla Sanford's cheeks took on the
hue of the summer sunset, and still Uncle Billy saw--and Aunt Marion
said--nothing.

One afternoon, a few months later, the _Sheridan_ dropped anchor a mile
or more out in the shallow, land-locked bay of Manila, and the launches
and lighters brought the army passengers ashore, many of them for their
second visi