“But faix!—how much perliter was the crayther to be sure!”
CHAPTER III
It was one of the peculiarities of the officers of the Fort Prince George garrison that they were subject to fits of invisibility, Mrs. Annandale declared. She had been taciturn, even inattentive, over her dish of chocolate at early breakfast. More than once she turned, with a frostily fascinating smile, beamingly expectant, as the door opened. But when the dishes were removed, and the breakfast-room resumed its aspect as parlor, and her niece sat down to her embroidery-frame as if she had been at home in a country house in Kent, and the captain rose and began to get into his outdoor gear, Mrs. Annandale’s sugared and expectant pose gave way to blunt disappointment.
“Where are those villains we wasted our good cheer upon overnight?” she brusquely demanded. “I vow I expected to find them bowing their morning compliments on the door-step!”
“You must make allowances for our rude frontier soldiers,”—the commandant began.
“Were they caught up into the sky or swallowed up by the earth?”
The commandant explained that the tours of service recurred with unwelcome frequency in a garrison so scantily officered as Fort Prince George, and that Mervyn and Raymond were both on duty.
“You should have excused them, dear Brother, since they are our acquaintances, and let some of those rowdy fellows in the mess-hall march, or goose-step, or deploy, or what not, in their stead.”
“Shoot me—no—no!” said the commandant, wagging his head, for this touched his official conscience, and the citadel in which it was ensconced not even this wily strategist could reach. “No, no, each man performs his own duty as it falls to him. I would not exchange or permit an exchange to—to, no, not to be quit forever of Fort Prince George.”
“Poor Arabella—she looks pale.”