"What is on the other side of the house?" I asked.

"Let us go and see." And as we went, the doctor took my book from my
hand to carry it for me. He opened it, too, and looked at it. On the
other side or two sides of the house stretched away the level green
plain. At the back of it, stood houses half hidden by trees; indeed
all round two sides of the plain there was a border of buildings and
of flourishing trees as well. Down the north side, from the hotel
where we were, a road went winding: likewise under arching trees; here
and there I could see cannon and a bit of some military work. All the
centre of the plain was level and green, and empty; and from the hotel
to the library stretched a broad strip of bare ground, brown and
dusty, alongside of the road by which we had come across last night.
In the morning sun, as indeed under all other lights and at all other
hours, this scene was one of satisfying beauty. Behind the row of
houses at the western edge of the plain, the hills rose up, green and
wooded, height above height; and an old fortification stood out now
under the eastern illumination, picturesque and grey, high up among
them. As Dr. Sandford and I were silent and looking, I saw another
grey figure pass down the road.

"Who are those people that wear grey, with a black stripe down the
leg?" I asked.

"Grey?" said the doctor. "Where?"

"There is one yonder under the trees," I said, "and there was one in
the omnibus yesterday. Are those the cadets?"

"I suppose so."

"Then Preston wears that dress. I wonder how I shall find him, Dr.
Sandford?"

"Find whom?" said the doctor, waking up.

"My cousin Preston--Preston Gary. He is here."

"Here?" repeated the doctor.

"Yes--he is a cadet--didn't you know it? He has been here a long
while; he has only one more year, I believe. How can we find him, Dr.
Sandford?"

"I am ignorant, Daisy."

"But we must find him," I said, "for of course he will want to see me,
and I want to see him, very much."

The doctor was silent, and I remember an odd sense I had that he was
not pleased. I cannot tell how I got it; he neither did nor said
anything to make me think so; he did not even look anywise different
from usual; yet I felt it and was sure of it, and unspeakably
mystified at it. Could Preston have been doing anything wrong? Yet the
doctor would not know that, for he was not even aware that Preston was
in the Military Academy till I told him.

"I do not know,