"That's what I'm dying to know. I was out in the very middle of the parade, and this something was scurrying over toward Gordon's quarters as I was coming here. We ran slap into each other. I sang out, 'Halloo! Beg pardon,' and began hunting for the book that was knocked out from under my arm, and this figure just whizzed right on,—never answered at all."
"Odd!" said the major. "Some one of the men, do you think? been over paying a visit to a sweetheart in some kitchen of the opposite quarters?"
"Well, no," answered McLean, coloring and hesitating. "It might have been some sweetheart going over to visit the east side and taking a short cut across the parade. It wasn't a man."
"Oh! That's it, of course," chimed in Mrs. Brenham at once. "The Johnsons have a girl—Winnie they call her—who is perpetually gadding about, and I warrant it was she. Come! Let us see the scrap-book."
And so the party returned to the business of the evening and were soon absorbed in the pages of McLean's collection. He had many a question to answer, and was kept from the seat he longed to take, by Nellie Bayard's side. Where three or four women are gathered together over an album of photographs or a scrap-book of which he is the owner, no man need hope to escape for so much as an instant. Yet she was watching him and wondering at what she saw,—the effort it cost him to pay attention to their simplest question—the evident distraction that had seized upon him.
By and by tattoo sounded. The major went out with McLean to receive the reports, and when they returned Mr. Hatton came too.
"Where have you been, Mr. Hatton?" asked Mrs. Miller. "We've been looking for you all the evening, and wouldn't have a bite or a glass of wine until you came in."
"Over at the Gordons'. They are having a little gathering too, mostly of the refugees,—regular hen convention. I was the only man there for over an hour."
"Who all were there?" inquired the hostess—her Southern birth and her woman's interest in the goings-on of the garrison manifesting themselves at one and the same time.
"Oh, about a dozen, all told," answered Mr. Hatton. "Mrs. Bruce and Jeannie, Mrs. Forrest, Mrs. Post, the Gordon girls, Mrs. Wells, and finally Miss Forrest. The little parlor was packed like a ration-can by nine o'clock, and I was glad to slip away at first call."