West Point Colors

by Anna Bartlett Warner

"Cherry, you don't seem to hear, my child. What does he mean about their 'finding' him and his not coming home, but going to the Antipodes?"

"I think it is just some of his nonsense, Mrs. Kindred," said the girl, too happy to be alarmed. "He wants to make you come, and so he says all the queer things he can think of. You see West Point hasn't really changed him one bit."

"Dear fellow!" said the mother, with another look at the picture. "I think you must be right, Cherry. I am getting used to the dress a little. And I'd almost give my life to see him. But do you really think I could go so far alone, even if I had the money?"

With the happy courage of their years, the girls assured her that nothing possibly could be easier; get in and get out all right, and the railway companies would do the rest.

"Uncle Thorn will put you in, you know," said Violet, "and as for your getting out, when you are so near Magnus I don't believe anybody could keep you in the cars without handcuffs and fetters. You'll just fly out."

"But suppose I fly out too soon?" said Mrs. Kindred, to whose eyes the two thousand miles of space loomed up very large indeed.

"You will not," said Rose decidedly. "Conductor will not let you. Read on, mamma, please."

So Mrs. Kindred read on, only to get more hopelessly mixed as to the real state of things. "Skins" and "scalps"—third-class corporals and the Antipodes; laying it off on the West Point vernacular did not clear up the meaning a bit. And when the letter had been read carefully twice through from end to end, Mrs. Kindred laid it down and calmly announced that she should set off for the East as soon as she could get ready. And the girls kissed her and cheered her, and only wished they could go too.

And things turned out a good deal as they had said. Mr. Thorn not only bought her ticket, but put her in careful charge of the conductor. The girls packed the modest little trunk, stowing in all the gingercakes there was room for; Violet laid in a dainty handkerchief embroidered with the young cadet's initials, Rose added a small pincushion "to go in his pocket," and Cherry, with some demurs, sent him her last little drawing of the old apple tree which had been his own special private gymnasium. Cherry had a very pretty knack with her pencil. Then they all went to the station to see her off, even some of the neighbours joining in.

"It's a clear Providence your goin', Mrs. Kindred," said one good woman, whose husband had come West looking for "royal roads" to wealth and place. "Now you kin tell us all about it, for sen' Magnus went, we've been athinkin' o' sendin' our Bill. He's a dreffle shiftless feller: don't take after me, if I do say it. Bill just despises work in any shape or way, and so his father kinder thought maybe he'd do for West Point. They'd pull him through, likely, just as they do the rest, and then he'd he provided for."