tripping lightly about the house, singing
sweetly, softly as she passed the library, and bursting into carolling
melody when at undisturbing distance away, it was odd to note the many
little items that required her frequent incursions on the sanctum
itself,--books to be straightened and dusted, scraps of writing-paper to
be tidied up, maps to be rolled and tied. Mollie, the housemaid, could
sweep or tend the fires in that domestic centre, the captain's den, but
none but the young housewife herself presumed to touch a pen or dust a
tome. Jack's mornings were mainly taken up at the barracks, riding-hall,
or in mounted drill far out on the cavalry plain, whence his ringing
baritone voice could reach her admiring ears and--for it was only
honeymoon with her still--set her to wondering if it really were
possible that that splendid fellow were her own, her very own; and time
and again Mrs. Grace would find herself stopping short in her avocation
and going to the front windows and gazing with all her lovely brown eyes
over to the whirling dust-cloud on the eastern plain and revelling in
the power and ring of Jack's commanding voice, and going off into
day-dreams. _Was_ it possible that there had been a great, a fearful
war, in which the whole country was threatened with ruin, and hundreds
of men had made wonderful names for themselves, and Jack not one of
them,--Jack, her hero, her soldier beyond compare? _Could_ it be that
the war was fought and won without him? But then, who could be braver
in action, wiser in council, than he? Did not the --th worship him to a
man? Was not Indian fighting the most trying, hazardous, terrible of all
warfares, and was not Jack pre-eminent as an Indian-fighter? Was there
not a deep scar on his breast that would have been deeper and redder but
for her little filmy handkerchief that stopped the cruel arrow just in
time? Was any one so gallant, so noble, so gentle, so tender, true,
faithful,--um-m-m,--sweet? was the way Mrs. Grace's intensified thoughts
would have found expression, had she dared, even to herself, to give
them utterance? And he loved her! he loved her! and--heavens and earth!
but _this_ isn't practising, or housework either; and pretty, happy,
blushing Mrs. Truscott would shake herself together, so to speak, and
try to get back to the programme of daily duty she had so
conscientiously mapped out for herself. Perhaps it was because she
accomplished so little in the mornings that, whe