followed to the little open
carriage and, with a shiver, assisted his angular visitor to a seat.)

"A Key!" she shouted, "A Key, Cochero! No quiere mas hoy. Manana! Ocho!
Sabe, Cochero? Ocho! Now don't chewbe--What's late in their lingo,
anyhow? 'Tisn't tardy, I know; that's afternoon. Tardeeo? Thank you.
Now--well, just sit down, first, lieutenant. You see _we_ know how
to address officers by their titles, if the Red Cross don't. I'd teach
'em to Mister me if I was an officer. Now, what I want to see you about
first is this. Your general has put me off one way or another every time
I've called this last two weeks. I've always treated him politely, but
for some reason he'll never see me now, and yet they almost ran after me
at first. Now, you can fix it easy enough, and you do it and you won't
regret it. I only want him to listen to me three minutes, and that's
little enough for anybody to ask. You do it, and I can do a good deal
more for you than you think for, an' I will do it, too, if certain
people don't treat me better. It's something you'll thank me for
mightily later on if you don't now. I've had my eyes open, lieutenant,
an' I see things an' I hear things an' I know things you mighty little
suspect."

"Pardon me, Miss Perkins," interposed Stuyvesant at this juncture, his
nerves fairly twitching under the strain. "Let us get at the matters on
which you wish to speak to me. Malate, Cochero!" he called to the pygmy
Filipino on the box. "I am greatly pressed for time," he added, as the
carriage whirled away, the hoofs of the pony team flying like shuttles
the instant the little scamps were headed homeward.

"Well, what I want mostly is to see the general. He's got influence with
General Drayton and I know it, and these Red Cross people have poisoned
his ears. Everybody's ears seem to be just now against me and I can get
no hearing whatever. Everything was all right at first; everything was
promised me, and then, first one and then another, they all backed out,
and I want to know why--I'm bound to know why, and they'd better come to
me and make their peace now than wait until the papers and the P. D.
A.'s get after 'em, as they will,--you hear my words now,--they _will_
do just as soon as my letters reach the States. _You're_ all right
enough. I've told them how you helped with those poor boys of mine
aboard the train. Bad way they'd been in if we hadn't been there, you
and I. Why, I just canvassed that train till