Mrs. Fortescue and the Colonel went up-stairs to dress for dinner, and Kettle, on watch in the hall, took charge of the After-Clap, who commanded to be taken back into the office.  Kettle, as always, promptly obeyed, and putting the baby on Sergeant McGillicuddy’s desk, allowed the After-Clap to wreck everything in sight.

It had not been originally designed that Kettle should be the After-Clap’s nurse.  The colored mammy who had nursed Beverley and Anita with tender devotions having gone to her well-earned rest, Mrs. Fortescue had determined to be very modern with the After-Clap.  A smart young trained nurse, in a ravishing cap, was his first nurse.  But the baby showed such marked preference for Kettle, and Kettle dogging the baby by day and night and thrusting superfluous services and advice upon the nurse, she decided she would not stand being “bossed by a nigger,” and took a train for the East.  Then, Mrs. Fortescue determined to return to first principles and imported from Virginia, at great cost and trouble, a colored mammy, most capable and experienced.  But the complications with Kettle grew more acute, and the mammy, in a blaze of indignation, took even stronger ground than the trained nurse, and declared she “warn’t goin’ to be bossed by no black nigger.”  When she had shaken the snow of Fort Blizzard from her feet, there was nothing left but to hand the baby over to Kettle and Mrs. McGillicuddy, as coadjutor.  After tending her own brood and keeping a sharp eye on Anna Maria McGillicuddy, her eldest daughter, who had reached the stage of beaux, and cooking the best meals for the Sergeant that any sergeant could ask, Mrs. McGillicuddy still had time to lend a helping hand with the After-Clap.

Kettle and Mrs. McGillicuddy had been good friends ever since the time, nineteen years before, when she had become the little Sergeant’s two-hundred-pound bride.  But in the twenty years, during which Kettle had never left “Miss Betty” and Sergeant McGillicuddy had been Colonel Fortescue’s factotum, there had been a continual guerilla warfare between Kettle and the Sergeant.  The Sergeant alluded scornfully to Kettle as “the naygur,” while with Kettle the Sergeant was always “ole McGillicuddy.”  Mrs. McGillicuddy was invariably on Kettle’s side, and one blast upon her bugle horn was worth ten thousand men in what Kettle called his “collusions,” with the Sergeant.  Sergeant McGillicuddy had performed prodigies of valor in fights with Indians; he had been mentioned in general order, along with Colonel Fortescue, and was commonly reputed to fear neither the devil nor the doctor.  But he was under iron discipline with Mrs. McGillicuddy, and Kettle, like everybody else, knew it.

While the After-Clap was disporting himself with the articles on the Sergeant’s desk, under the full glare of the electric light, a shadow passed the window.  The next minute Sergeant McGillicuddy entered, the lion in him aroused by the sight of the liberties taken with his desk.