“Do they know at home what you have done?” Jack asked, doubtingly.

“Yes,” Dick said, noting with boyish quickness the indecision in Jack’s troubled face.  “I sent a letter to Aunt Pliny, from New York, telling her we were soldiers, and that we were happy and well.”

“You impudent young scamp—­to write that to your best friend!  Don’t you know it will kill her?”

Dick had no answer for this, and looked perplexedly at Tom, who was lost in admiration of a neighboring group engaged in athletic exercises.  He felt rather than heard the question put by the Mentor, and observing Dick’s discomfiture, stammered: 

“It didn’t kill your mother when you went for a soldier, I guess.”

The astute young rascal had hit upon the weak place, and Jack stood in anxious doubt wondering what to do.  An aide that he recognized from division headquarters rode past at the moment and Jack turned to watch him.  He leaped from his horse at the colonel’s tent.  Jack again looked at the boys.  They were lost in delight at the scene and oblivious of the debate going on in their guardian’s mind.

“Stay here till I come back,” he said, authoritatively, and strode off to Grandison’s tent.  As he reached it the major, McGoyle, was entering, and Jack waited until that officer should come out.  He came presently, and Colonel Grandison with him.  Jack saluted, and stated his dilemma to the commander, who listened with amused interest.

“I don’t see that anything can be done now, Jack.  I’m just about leaving the regiment.  I have been assigned to General Tyler’s staff during the campaign.  McGoyle takes command of the regiment.  He will need orderlies, and the boys can serve with him until we can get time to look into the business.  I will settle the matter with him, and if you will write a telegram to the lad’s family I will have it sent as I go to headquarters.”

Jack’s relief and gratitude were best seen in the brightening eye and the more buoyant movement that succeeded the heaviness and agitation of his first impression.  The boys’ coming would weigh upon him every minute until he was in some sort relieved of even passive complicity.  He would feel that the kind-hearted “Pearls,” as the aunts were often called, would look upon him as having led the truants into the army.  But Grandison’s interposition had shifted from him a weighty anxiety.  The boys would not be left friendless and irresponsible in the turbulent streets of Washington.  Nor would they, as orderlies, be in continuous or inextricable danger in battle—­for whereas the soldier in the line must keep in ranks even when not in actual battle, with the enemy’s missiles as destructive as in the charge or combat, the orderlies may take advantage of the inequalities of ground and natural objects.  Jack explained something of this to the young Marlboroughs, and was fairly irritated at the crest-fallen look that came into their eager, shining faces when they comprehended that they were not to be with their hero.