eased by their order, and here for three days
and nights he is nursed and petted and made so much of that he is
unable to recognize himself, and here sister Puss comes to cry over
and kiss and bless him and, in her turn, to be made much of and
forbidden to leave, and then, after her big brother's return to duty
with the battalion, now being fed and _feted_ by all the North Side,
he must needs come over every evening to see her; and, now that
presentable uniforms have arrived and the rough beards have been
shaved and the men of the old regiment look less like "toughs," but no
more like American soldiers as our soldiers look in the field of their
sternest service, her sisterly pride in her big brother is beautiful
to see,--so is her self-abnegation, for, somehow or other, though he
comes to see her he stays to look at Ruth Harvey, shy, silent, and
beautiful, and soon, as though by common consent, that corner of the
big parlor is given up to those two, the tall, stalwart trooper and
the slender, willowy girl. And one evening he comes earlier than usual
in manifest discomposure, and soon it transpires that important orders
have reached him. Fanny turns pale. "Are you--all--ordered back?" she
cries, and is for an instant radiant at his assurance that the order
involves only himself. He is called to department head-quarters to
report in person to the general commanding, who is about to make a
tour through the mountains in Northwestern Wyoming and wants Drummond
with the escort. She is radiant only until she catches sight of her
sister's face. It is not so very warm an evening, yet she marshals the
household out on the steps, out on the back veranda,--anywhere out of
that parlor, where, just as the faint notes of the trumpets are heard,
sounding their martial "tattoo," and just as Lieutenant Wing,
returning from a tiptoed visit to his sleeping boy and escaped for the
moment from the vigilance of his wife, now happens to go blundering
in,--there is heard from the dimly-lighted corner near the piano the
sound of subdued sobbing, the sound of a deep, manly voice, low,
soothing, wondrously happy, the sound--a sound--indescribable in
appropriate English, yet never misunderstood,--a sound at which Wing
halts short, pauses one instant irresolute; then faces about and goes
tip-toeing out into the brilliant sheen of the vestibule lamps,--into
the brilliant gleam of his fond wife's questioning, reproachful eyes.

And for all answer, it