"I feel as if I were drafted," she declared to Uncle Robert. "I know it is my duty to go and do the best that I can, but I would so much rather have remained at home."
"You find, then, that no one is quite exempt from the warfare?" and he smiled. "Still, I think I can trust you to be a good soldier."
"I am second in the regiment," she said. "Mr. Morrison must always stand first."
It seemed very quiet and lonesome in that large room, where you were put upon your honor not to speak, and the silence was broken only by the recitations, or some remark of Mrs. Wilder. A long, dull day, though the session closed at two, there being no intermission.
Lottie Thorne was the only girl Kathie was well acquainted with. That ambitious young lady had pleaded very hard for boarding-school, and, being disappointed, was rather captious and critical. Emma Lauriston sat next to her, and Kathie fancied she might like her very much. She had met her in the summer at the rowing-matches.
But she was glad enough to get home. Rob had his head full of Camp Schuyler, and Freddy had arrayed himself in gorgeous regimentals and sat out on a post drumming fearfully.
"I want a little more talk about this substitute business," said Uncle Robert, at the table. "Mr. Morrison offered to go for seven hundred dollars. He has three hundred of his own. Now what do you think we ought to give him?"
He addressed the question more particularly to Rob and Kathie.