ident or general who had done
anything conspicuous during the past six years had been suddenly flung
at my head (as in the children's game where they shout "Beast, Bird,
Fish!" and you answer before the count of three), I could have told who
he was, and whether the conspicuous deed had been good or bad.

At Alvarado we had thought to be past invitation zone, and Father had
been fearfully hoarding his resources at the expense of his friends, to
hold out against high charges at a big hotel. There was said to be a
very big one indeed, at the Springs, with bills to match; but at the
eleventh hour one of Father's devoted band of rich widows (the widows
thoughtfully provided for him by deceased financiers) took a furnished
cottage there and asked us to visit her. She was an unusually nice
widow, whose husband had made a fortune through inventing gollywogs with
different eyes from other gollywogs. The strain had given him a weak
heart, and he had died. The widow's name was Mrs. Main, and Di
shamelessly christened her the "Main Chance." She certainly _was_ ours!

Mrs. Main, whom we'd met in New York, dashed off to Alvarado Springs a
fortnight ahead of us, in time to get acquainted through letters of
introduction with the highest-up officers at Fort Alvarado, and the
wives of those who had any; also to put the furnished "cottage," as she
called it (there must have been fifteen or twenty rooms), in order; and
the night we arrived, after our long but utterly fascinating journey,
she gave a dinner in honour of Father and Diana.

I had been tremendously interested in the whole trip from Washington to
Arizona, and with the first glimpse I had of the romantic Springs I felt
a thrilling sensation that it was a place where things were bound to
happen. The hotel, as all who have heard of Alvarado must know, stands
in the midst of a young forest, overlooking a canon that for colour is
like a vast cup full of rainbows, and beyond the forest to the left is
the garrison. From the higher stories of the hotel you can see the red
roofs of the officers' quarters, and farther away the barracks and the
big, bare drill ground, but from the wide verandas no houses are
anywhere visible, except the colony of cottages built in Spanish fashion
like the hotel itself, each having its own little garden with a flowery
hedge. From the glorified cottage Mrs. Main had taken we could walk up
to a dance at the hotel in five minutes.

I think Eagle would have