"My dear!" said Mrs. Beguile. "I am surprised! Never show such special interest. Why, you will turn the young man's head."
"Just what we're after," said the Kitten. "And what we'll do, too. I'll make him look at me—I vow I will!"
The words were spoken half aloud, but the young lady got not a glimpse of the eyes in question. Corporal Kindred's words of command rang out minus let or hinderance; and if the girls put themselves in the way, he led his men straight on, and they had to get out of it.
"I don't mind," said Miss Saucy, after one of these raids. "It's fun. And he can't help seeing us!"
"It's ravishing to hear anything in such a voice," said Miss Beguile. "If I were going to be shot, I should like to have him give the order."
"It wouldn't be exactly what you call going off the stage to slow music," said Miss Saucy, as a sharp and imperative "Halt!" came from the young corporal's lips. The girls refreshed themselves with a prolonged titter, the weary plebs dropped down upon the grass. Magnus walked slowly down the road.
"I wonder if one might venture to address his High Mightiness, in these his moments of comparative leisure?" said Miss Dangleum. "They are so pernickity about drills. Mr. Kindred!" (softly and experimentally). Magnus turned within a yard of the young lady and paced back.
"Oh, Mr. Kindred! If there was a snake here, could you come and kill it? Wouldn't a rattlesnake be against regulations?"
And now there was a smothered laugh among the plebs. But the corporal turned and took his way past the ladies again, and gave no sign.
"Mr. Kindred!" (very pleadingly) while one pretty hand held out a box of brown chocolates and another a red-cheeked peach. In apparently deep abstraction Mr. Kindred once more paced down the road.