had imperceptibly advanced to condescension, but when the steward
presently appeared with a siphon of iced seltzer, and, bowing
deferentially, said he hoped everything was to Miss Ray's liking, and
added that it seemed a long time since they had seen the captain and
supposed he must be a colonel now, the thin eyebrows of the tall maiden
were uplifted into little arches that paralleled the furrows of her brow
as she inquired:

"Miss Ray?--from Fort Leavenworth?"

The answer was a smiling nod of assent as the younger lady buried her
lovely, dark face in the flowers set before her by the assiduous waiter,
and Stuyvesant felt sure she was trying to control an inclination to
laugh.

"Well, you must excuse me if I have been a little--slow," said the elder
in evident perturbation. "You see--we meet such queer people
travelling--sometimes. Don't you find it so?"

The dark face was dimpling now with suppressed merriment.

"Yes--occasionally," was the smiling answer.

"But then, being the daughter of an army officer," pursued the other
hurriedly, "you have to travel a great deal. I suppose you really--have
no home?" she essayed in the half-hopeful tone to be expected of one who
considered that a being so endowed by nature must suffer some
compensatory discomforts.

"Yes and--no," answered Miss Ray urbanely. "In one sense we army girls
have no home. In another, we have homes everywhere."

It is a reproach in the eyes of certain severe moralists that a
fellow-being should be so obviously content with his or her lot. The
elder woman seemed to feel it a duty to acquaint this beaming creature
with the manifest deficiency in her moral make-up.

"Yes, but I should think most any one would rather have a real home, a
place where they weren't bounden to anybody, no matter if it was homely."
(She called it "humbly," and associated it in mind with the words of
Payne's immortal song.) "Now, when I went to see Colonel Ray about our
society, he told me he had to break up everything, going to Cuba, but he
didn't mention about your going West."

"Father was a little low in his mind that day," said Miss Ray, a shade
of sadness passing over her face. "Both my brothers are in the service,
and one is barely seventeen."

"Out at service!" interrupted the other. "You don't mean----"

"No," was the laughing answer, and in Miss Ray's enjoyment of the
situation her eyes came perilously near seeking those of Mr. Stuyvesant,
which she well