und that many of the elders were driven every day to town and its high
school, while most of the mites were corraled each morning in the
basement of the post chapel, pupils of a sergeant schoolmaster whose
success had been quite remarkable, so much so that parents were
reluctant--and their progeny rebellious--when other and more modern
methods, Priscilla's, were suggested. It must be owned that the little
ones from the start found Miss Sanford unsympathetic, if not impossible.
Children love being catechized as little as do their elders, and they
resented it that this somewhat prim, yet by no means unprepossessing,
spinster should consider it her duty and her privilege to cross-question
them as to their infantile responsibilities and, all uninvited, to
undertake supervision of their noisy sports. Finding no opening for a
day school, Miss Sanford had sought to interest the weans in an
afternoon reading class. The first day or two the major's spacious
quarters were well filled, so were the children with alluring goodies
they could thoroughly appreciate. But when sermons began to take the
place of sandwiches, and moral admonitions and questionings were
administered in lieu of lemonade and lady-fingers, Miss Sanford's
kindergarten dissolved in air and the would-be gentle monitress in
disappointed tears. Uncle Will had whimsically striven to console her
with the promise of better luck when school stopped in June, but Aunt
Marion had smilingly though silently shaken her head. She knew
Priscilla's propensities of old. She had convictions, said Aunt Marion,
and theories as to how children should be taught to see the serious side
of life. Priscilla was suffering from an accumulation of pent-up zeal
and enthusiasm that was yet to find an outlet.

Then one day the outlet came.

Lieutenant Parker, "Exchange officer," so-called, was suddenly ordered
to duty at West Point, and Colonel Stone asked Sandy Ray if he would
take his place. "Strictly speaking," said he, "I should name one of my
own officers, but I have other work for all of them, and lots of it. You
have really very little else just now that you can do, except, perhaps,
go to stables."

Now, if there was one institution more than another at Minneconjou
against which Priscilla Sanford had set her seal, it was the post
Exchange. In all her months of residence under Uncle Will's, the
major's, roof, never once had the others there sheltered forgotten the
day of her first acqu