"I can quite understand that!" I exclaimed. And then they all laughed, and some of them applauded.
"The really important question is," said Captain or Mr. Smith, "whether you are going to be an officers' or a cadets' lady."
I hadn't an idea what he meant, but I remembered Vic's saying that in the lower middle classes they sometimes call a man's wife his "lady." Perhaps, I thought, the expression had been brought over to the nicest people in America, in the Mayflower, which they all talk so much about; for certainly some of the people in her must have been cooks or in the steerage; there are too many descendants for the first class passengers alone. After considering for a minute I said in rather an embarrassed way that I wasn't "quite sure yet whether I would be either."
"You must be one or the other, you know, or you'll be like the bat in the fable who was neither bird nor beast, and so was out of all the fun on both sides. I may be prejudiced, but I advise you to be a cadets' lady. And you'd better decide now on account of to-night."
"To-night?" I repeated, puzzled.
"Yes, on account of making out your card. Say, Lady Betty, if you are going in with us, can I make out your card?"
Then arose a clamour. It appeared that they all wanted to make out the card--whatever it was. I asked if I couldn't have one from each, but it appeared that you couldn't do that. My cadet had spoken first, so he said that he would do it; but the others could give me bell-buttons and chevrons, and decorate fans for me instead.
"Do you like hops, Lady Betty?" enquired a perfect pet of a cadet, who looked like a cherub in uniform.
"Hops?" I wondered why he should ask me such an irrelevant question, but I answered as intelligently as I could. "I don't know much about them. I think they're graceful, but I don't like the smell."
He looked petrified. "The smell?"