'The cold upon your old stone gates,
Is not more lyin' to you than I.'"
"Did you ever know such a rattlepate?" exclaimed Mrs. Turner, as the long legs went striding down the row, and the young officers sat gazing after him in wonderment.
"Never," replied Mrs. Stannard; "and yet he has as true a heart and as tender a nature as almost any man I know. There was no fun in him while Mr. Ray was in trouble; and no more devoted and loyal friend could he find. I like Mr. Blake, and always have liked him."
But Mrs. Whaling shook her head. "No right-principled young man could speak so lightly of sacred things. Ah! here comes the orderly with the mail." And as she spoke the trim young soldier entered the gate carrying his budget of letters. Mrs. Whaling stretched forth her hand to take the packet.
"Please, ma'am," said he, "I left yours at the colonel's, and my orders is not to give the others to anybody but them as they belongs to."
"I will distribute them here, orderly," she replied, with a superior smile, "as I know all these ladies and gentlemen and you do not." She was determined to see who received letters and from whom, if a possible thing, and she carried her point. Most of them were for the officers. Nothing came as yet from the regiment. Mrs. Truscott received two or three letters from the East, which were not handed her until the self-appointed postmistress had scrutinized the superscriptions; so, too, she inspected the bills and billets that came to the young subs, and two letters for Miss Sanford,—one from New York, the other, addressed in a bold, vigorous hand, was from Headquarters, Division of the Missouri, Chicago. At this, through
"All her autumn tresses falsely brown,"
she shot sidelong daggers, indeed, as she passed it with significant smile.
"I thought he'd write even though to-morrow would bring him here himself," she said; and Miss Sanford bit her lip and colored far more in indignation than in confusion; but, rallying like the little heroine she was, and bent now on baffling the schemes of the wily interloper, she quickly leaned forward and took the letter, glanced brightly at Mrs. Stannard, and exclaimed, with all the delight and naïveté of genuine surprise,—
"Why, it is for me, Mrs. Stannard! Now you shall not see a line of it, for you would not show me yours." And then with provoking coolness, while Grace gasped in admiration and astonishment, Marion opened and read with beaming smile her letter from Ray,—the only one he had time to write in Chicago.