Mary's face wore such a comical expression of blended delight and dismay that Roberta laughed, and Gay stopped the refusal that Mary was beginning to stammer out by putting both hands over her ears.
"No, I won't listen," she declared. "Of course you didn't expect to do anything like this, and didn't bring the proper clothes, but it is such an informal affair that it doesn't make any difference. Roberta and I can rig you out in something of mine. It will be all the more fun."
"Oh, it's just the larkiest lark that ever was!" exclaimed Mary so excited over the prospect that her cheeks were growing redder and redder, and her eyes shining with happy anticipation.
"This day has been full of thrills, and—oo, oo! There goes another!" she added with a little shiver of delight as the band began to play. The carriage had stopped at the end of the parade ground, where the usual crowd of spectators was gathered.
"Martial music always sends cold shivers up and down my back," she said gravely. "It makes me want to cheer and march right off to do something big and brave—'storm the heights,' or bleed and die for my country, or something of that sort. I've always thought that I'd have been a soldier if I hadn't been born a girl."
She laughed as she said it, but there was a quiver of earnestness in her voice. Parade was a matter-of-course affair to Gay and Roberta, a part of the weekly routine of Post life, which familiarity made ordinary. They exchanged amused glances which Mary did not see, and made remarks and criticisms on the manœuvres which she did not hear. Wholly absorbed, she leaned forward in the carriage, watching every movement of the drill.
It is always an inspiring sight, even to one who looks no farther than the outward show, admiring the clock-like precision which makes a battalion move as one man; but to Mary every khaki coat in the regiment clothed a hero. Lexington and Valley Forge, Gettysburg and Chickamauga called to her through every drum-beat and bugle note.
She had loved her old dog-eared copy of the History of the United States, and many a time had spread it out on her desk to re-read, when she should have been studying other things. She had pored over its stories of war till the black and white of its printed pages had transformed her into a little fire-ball of a patriot. Now as she saw for the first time these men who stood as the guardians of "Old Glory," everything she had ever read of heroism and blood-stained battle-fields and glorious dying, came back to her in a flood of enthusiasm which nearly lifted her to her feet. When at last the band struck into "The Star-spangled Banner" and the guns fired the signal which heralded the lowering of the colors, her plain little face was almost transfigured with the exalted emotions of the moment.
"Aye, call it holy ground,
The soil that they have trod,"