Far through the memory shines a happy day.
—Lowell.
Magnus meanwhile went speeding on; leaping over space, and chafing at the lost minutes in terms not very flattering to his fair disturbers. But he was in good time, after all. The stage had waited for a West Shore train, and when Magnus reached the furthest and nearest point to which he might go, the horses with their light load were but just nearing the riding hall.
Slowly, slowly—how that stage did creep along. Magnus crossed the road, went back again, darted from one point to another; if only he could get a good glimpse inside! Now the lumbering thing turned a little; ah, it was just empty. No; surely that was a bonnet on the further seat; and now at this window looking out for him! And surely if ever a forage cap went high in air, one went then. But the moment it was within reach again Magnus pulled it far down over his own eyes. He had been at West Point more than a year, looking at tactical officers, professors, dignitaries of all sorts; with wild cadets and all kinds of girls; and now this was his mother's face, and like nothing else in all the world. The boy's heart gave a bound fit to burst something less elastic than a young heart always is.
As for poor Mrs. Kindred, when she saw that cap go up in the air, of course you know what happened to her. But she would not look away, even to cry, and sat gazing at that tall figure in grey and drawing the long sobbing breaths that bear such a very mixed freight. She even forgot to pull the check string, and would have been driven straight on if Magnus, in a voice stern enough for the first captain, had not bidden the driver stop. And it seemed so natural and fitting that her boy should pay her fare that when he pulled out a hidden quarter and passed it up to the driver no qualms of fear that he might be "skinned" for so doing disturbed her mind. Of course cadets have no more business with pocket money than they have with pockets, but she did not know that.
Magnus got one hand on his arm, gripping it with the other hand as if he thought she might run away; and drew her rapidly along through the nearest byways to a nook among rocks and trees that he deemed his own private discovery. Once there, hidden away in the sweet, cool shadow, with the river plashing softly far below, and a wood thrush ringing his chimes near by, Cadet Corporal Kindred threw his cap down on the grass, put his arms round his mother, and hid his face in her neck as if he had been six years old.
It was just what the mother needed. For at first sight, this tall, splendid fellow with braid and buttons and chevrons, straight as a line, and with all the saucy curls cut away, laid her under a spell. Except the first meeting kiss she had had hardly a sign from him unless that grip of her hand. But now, with her boy in her arms, he was her boy still, and she quite too happy for this lower world.
"Child," she said at last, "what have they done with your hair? Have you been sick?"
Then Magnus looked up and laughed; the old shine in his eyes making her heart leap.
"Regulations," he said. "I am nothing any more but a bundle of regulations, mother. Might about as well be a convict labeled 379."
"Regulations!" Mrs. Kindred repeated. "I wish I had the making of them."