Beck smiled at the fat old sailor who was wheeling gravely around.
“If it weh not fo’ the unifohms we all would have no ahmy at all,” Dade persisted; “it is the unifohm that keeps the institution of milita’ism alive.”
“You seem to be thinking deeply to-night,” Beck replied.
“Ah nevah had such a good oppo’tunity befo’ fo’ studying the vanity of man.”
“If you could see us in the field, you wouldn’t think so,” Beck said, and he managed to put the words in the tone of one who had suffered for a great cause.
Dade glanced at him. She had a glimpse of her Remington picture again. His tone had touched her. She recalled all she had read of the hardships of soldiers’ lives, and she softened.
“Ah would lahk to see yo’ all theah,” she confessed.
“Would you?” He spoke eagerly, leaning toward her, gathering his saber into his lap. “You shall.” His cheek flushed red under his brown skin. He cast a glance about the armory, striving to hide its bare walls under the flags of all nations that had been draped there. The green plants standing stolidly in their tubs offered no place for a tête-à-tête.
She cast one glance his way, and then dropped her eyes.
“Yo’ swo’d theah, fo’ instance, is an emblem of vanity,” she went on hurriedly, in a final effort to regain her lost note of banter, “why do yo’ weah it in a ball room? Ah yo’ in dangeh? No, yo’ me’ely wish to show that yo’ can handle it skilfully in a dance—which yo’ can’t——” And she thrust a hand into a rent in her overskirt, and spread it over her palm in proof. “And those things, what do yo’ call them? That helmet co’d, as Leftenant Wood so cahfully explained to me, that is to hold yo’ helmet on; but yo’ haven’t yo’ helmet on now. And those othah things, lak pencils, that knock in mah eyes in dancing, what good ah they?”