"You think," he said, "that some girls wouldn't amount to much at a one-company post. When a man was hard up for comrades?"
"Not unless they were 'best girls' in truth."
"Oh, well, mine is," said Magnus confidently, "the very bestest sort. I don't know how much she knows—but if I stay at the Academy two years longer I shall have a stuffed head, full enough to lend on every occasion. Besides, it's not needful for a man's peace of mind that his wife should understand wave motion, is it, sir?"
Mr. Erskine laughed at him, and Cherry laughed too, though now colouring furiously.
"I suppose it is not needful," her father said, not noticing her, "unless in practice. Well, I hope it will turn out all right for you. I had a friend, Magnus, who got entangled, as I call it, very early, went away to college, and when he came back with all his honours, his mother forbade the bans on that distinct plea; she said the girl was too ignorant. I think my friend would have gone straight on through it all, but the girl was not of that sort. She refused to enter any family by the side door. So they waited, the engagement was virtually broken, and years went by. Then the mother died, the man sought his old love and married her. But Magnus, the girl had spent those years not in lamenting, not in flirting, but in solid, hard study. So that when at last they went forth in life together she had passed him, and was the better educated of the two."
What was Cherry laughing at? For while the cheeks had not all cooled down, the lips had parted in but half-controlled curls of fun.
"Well, if she was proficient in warped surfaces, I hope they enjoyed talking it over in their play-spells," said Magnus. "I've no use for some of those things, they sift out too many good men. We all felt bad to have Chuck go."
"Finished his course?" said Mr. Erskine.
"At West Point, sir; graduated at the wrong end, dropped. He did everything to stay; ran a light after taps, cut society, and sat night after night with his feet in cold water and his hands in his hair (what there was of it)," Magnus added in parenthesis. "But nothing did any good; he'd go next day and fess on a clean board. 'Mr. Simpkins,' the instructor asked him one day, 'are you as stupid at drill as you are in the section room?' And Chuck turned with the blandest face and answered: 'Nigh on to it, Lieutenant!' And he was."
How the listeners laughed again.