When they came to Annapolis at last and the party descended, all excitement, Peggy could hardly wait to appear at the scene of the coming festivities. But they were taken first to their rooms at the inn and there they left their baggage and powdered their noses, and fluffed their hair and then sallied forth once more, this time to go through the archway right into the Annapolis grounds, with the white buildings just as Peggy had dreamed, and the midshipmen and girls strolling and laughing together along the walks. They went to the reception room while Mrs. Forest sent up their cards. It had been arranged that certain of the young men were to come down and take charge of the party for the afternoon and evening. And while they were waiting Peggy looked at the other occupants of the reception room. Did the hearts of any go bounding along as much as those of the Andrews girls? Peggy, seeing no one but several middle-aged women, thought it was not likely. But perhaps she was wrong, for these were mothers, and they had not seen their sons since the beginning of the term. Would they be changed? Would they be glad to see them there for the games, and pilot them around as loyally as if they had been slight, laughing, dimpled young girls like that charming group yonder? Perhaps there was even more excitement in it for them than for the Andrews girls, but Peggy couldn’t know.
When at last the group arrived who were to pilot the girls about for the afternoon, Peggy was conscious of being introduced to one pleasant-faced young man after another, each in uniform, and each with a certain indescribable quality of self-possession and the ability to do just the right thing that characterizes the boys who are trained in our naval Academy. Would the girls rather go out on the water and see the boat races, or would they go over to the baseball game? It was a sort of a three-ringed circus day at the Academy.
Some girls wanted to go out in the launches, others thought the glare of sun on the baseball field would not burn their noses so badly. Peggy just couldn’t make up her mind to give up either of them.
“Oh, couldn’t I, couldn’t I see a little bit of both?” she cried pleadingly to the boy who had consulted her. “It’s just one day out of the whole world you know, and I want to get everything I can in it!”
Whatever slight restraint there might have been in first meeting fell away at her frank eagerness, and the boy’s expression assumed at once an alert interest in giving her as good a time as could be crammed into the hours before them. Out in the little rocking boat they went dancing over the water with the full blazing glare of the afternoon sun across it and in their eyes. She saw the race and cheered with the rest, though, unless she had been told every little while, she would not have known which boat was which. Every few minutes she turned to laugh her supreme delight into the equally radiant face of her companion, and the two were as good friends at once as if they had known each other for years.
Long before the sport on the water was over, however, Harold Wilbering, her new friend, insisted that they must leave if they really wanted to see anything of the game. She said reluctantly that she still wanted to, so they went bounding and leaping back over the waves and hurriedly made their laughing way toward the ball grounds. As they passed one of the buildings, Peggy heard a strange tick-ticking sound that was someway very interesting and compelling. She felt that it meant something, and was vaguely troubled by its persistence.
“What is that sound?” she found courage to ask at last.
“Oh, the wireless,” her companion answered indifferently.
The wireless! Right down that curious looking instrument, the thing sputtered and ticked! Oh, how queer it was to be where all the mysteries of the great sea were everyday commonplaces, as the wireless evidently was to the midshipmen. Perhaps some great ship was calling its distress, or signaling. Perhaps those very little sputters were the messages of a British war ship on its way to battle with the German cruisers! It did not take long for Peggy to picture herself as listening at the moment to one of the most stirring sea-messages of history—more important than the famous, “We have met the enemy and they are ours,” that she had once learned about in school, back in her grammar days. She forgot to talk to her young companion for fully five minutes under the stimulus of this beautiful idea!
When they came to the ball grounds and climbed into the bleacher seats, which were the only kind there were, the sun pouring generously down on them all the while, Peggy thought more of the crowd than of the game. She looked along the rows of backs ahead of them, and envied some of the girls for their very self-possessed, experienced appearance, and was glad she was not others with their too fancy clothes and their excess of furbelows, of tulle bows, and earrings and coat chains.