"Really, now, you know—won't somebody come and share me?"
The young adjutant's buttons were very bright, and his waist was very small; and the red and white (brown) of his complexion left nothing to be desired. If he had been a girl, you might have called his walk "willowy," but I know not the masculine of that. And the barber had plainly been open to persuasion in his case, and had left almost a lovelock or two on the tall head.
Magnus Kindred watched the party go by, but they did not see him. In one of the rocky, shady nooks on Flirtation, where the green leaves rustle and the river whispers softly to the shore, there he had hidden himself away with his sweet and bitter fancies. Hard, literal facts they were just then, for Magnus.
The footsteps died away, and more came, quicker and brisker than the first; and two cadets went by his hiding place. Then another with his best girl (for the time being); and Magnus watched them all. As the silence fell again a wood thrush in the shadows behind him rang its liquid chime.
Then a tall cadet with chevrons, and the dainty air and manner which had earned him the soubriquet of "Gentleman Joe," passed slowly by with his mother on his arm; he bending down to her, and she looking up to him, while a little white fidget of ten years old flitted about the two.
But when these were out of sight, then Magnus Kindred threw himself face down among the moss and ferns, and gave no further heed to outside things.
"Oh, mother!—and Cherry, and Violet, and Rose—and home!" It was very bitter for a while. And when at last, in answer to a distant drum-call, Magnus roused himself, and got on his feet, he knew that he hated that drum, and all it betokened, just as hard as he could.
Gentler thoughts came, as he mounted the hill. The clear notes of the thrushes were all around him, but in their grave sweetness there were no faltering tones; and while it pierced the boy's heart it strengthened it, too. Yes, one day he would be the tall man with chevrons, leading his mother along Flirtation; and she should be as proud of him as Mrs. Gresham was of her son. And, instead of that child in white, there would be—but here the drum became imperative, and Magnus stowed away all the rest of his thoughts, and double-timed every remaining step up to Camp Hard.