you'd talk like that to a real soldier--one
of those you're captain of. Well, I'll pretend I'm one of those
soldiers, and that you're my captain."

As I spoke, the taxi was drawing up in front of his hotel; but I went
straight on with my play, and gave him a military salute. "Thank you,
Captain," said I, "for taking an interest. I shan't forget. No more
fibs! I'll work for my corporal's stripe!"

"Good child!" he beamed on me, looking young and happy again. "I'll get
you the stripe. I have it ready for you upstairs. I'll bring it down
when I bring the money for the lace scarf. Would you rather wait in the
taxi, or will you come into the ladies' parlour in the hotel?"

I thought "parlour" a lovely word, and very French, though I supposed it
might be American, too. It was quite an adventure going into an hotel.

My captain (already I'd begun to think of him as that, since he'd called
me a soldier) paid the chauffeur and led me to a big drawing-room where
several women sat, so prettily dressed and so trim that they made me
feel shabby in my brown holland frock and my blown-about hair. I
wondered what he had meant by saying he would bring me a "corporal's
stripe," and whether he had meant anything at all, except a passing
joke. Somehow, I felt that he had had a definite idea, but I didn't
dream it would be anything half so fascinating as it turned out.

He was not gone more than five or six minutes, and when he appeared
again he drew up a chair in front of me, deliberately turning his back
to the other occupants of the room, so that they could not see what was
going on. Then he made me hold out my hands (I was ashamed of my untidy
gloves) and receive in them ten golden sovereigns, which he counted as
they dropped into my open palms.

"I hope you'll never regret bartering away your
great-great-grandmother's beautiful lace for this pittance," said he.
"And now for the corporal's stripe, if you're going to enlist in my
regiment."

"I am," I cried. "I've enlisted in it already."

"Here, then," and he took from his coat pocket a little crumpled-up ball
of something black and gold, evidently thrust in with haste. "This is
one of the chevrons I wore on my sleeve when I was made corporal of
cadets at West Point, eleven years ago this very month. You'll laugh, I
guess, when I tell you why I brought the thing with me over here. I kept
it, out of a sort of--of sentiment, or sentimentality maybe, because I
was so dashed proud