“That’s so, sir,” the Sergeant agreed, “and the chaplain, he compliments her on the way she marches them eight children and me to the chapel every Sunday, rain or shine, me havin’ the right of the line, Missis McGillicuddy herself bein’ the rear guard, the line properly dressed, no stragglers, everything done soldier-like.  But Missis McGillicuddy don’t follow me around like a poodle dog, as the palmist, and the mind reader, and the dream book said she would.  She’s hell-bent—­excuse me sir—­on havin’ her own way all the time.”

Just then a vision flitted past the door.  It was Anita, dressed for dinner, in a filmy gown of pale blue and white, the colors of the Blessed Damozel.  A light came into Colonel Fortescue’s eyes as they rested on this darling of his heart.  The Sergeant had a pretty daughter, Anna Maria by name, who was just Anita’s age and of whom the Sergeant was extravagantly fond.  The two fathers, the Colonel and the Sergeant, exchanged intelligent glances.  Often, in their twenty years of daily association, they talked together about things of which they never spoke to any other man.

“Anna Maria is a fine girl,” said the Colonel.

“Yes, sir,” answered the Sergeant, “if she’d just get over the fancy she has for Briggs, the artillery corporal.  That man is bound to be killed by a wheel runnin’ over him.  You know, sir, if there is anything on earth that skeers me stiff it is a horse hitched to any kind of a vehicle.  I don’t mind ridin’ ’em because then the horse’s heels is behind me.  But in a vehicle the horse’s heels is in front of me, and it makes me nervous.  I have told Anna Mariar that she shan’t so much as look at Briggs unless he exchanges into the cavalry, so the horse’s heels will be behind him, and not in front of him.”

The entrance bell rang, and Kettle went to the front door.  Colonel Fortescue could neither hear nor see the visitor, but the step and the sound of a military cloak thrown on a chair indicated the arrival of a junior lieutenant.  Colonel Fortescue looked annoyed.  The junior officer running after Anita bothered him even more than Briggs, the artillery corporal, bothered Sergeant McGillicuddy.  Anita was but a child—­only seventeen; the Colonel had proclaimed this when he brought Anita to the post.  Colonel Fortescue did all that a father and a Colonel could do to keep the junior lieutenants away from Anita, but no method has yet been found to keep junior officers away from pretty girls.

There were still twenty minutes before dinner, and the scoundrel, as Colonel Fortescue classified all the juniors who, like himself, adored Anita, seemed determined to stay until the musical gong sounded, and later, if he were asked.  This particular scoundrel, Broussard, was the one to whom the Colonel most objected of all the slim, good-looking scoundrels who wore shoulder straps, for Broussard had too much money to spend, and spent it wildly, so the Colonel