"That looks like it," she continued in her own thoughts. "Well, if this is what he's been waitin' for, thirty odd years, I don't feel to blame him. Now you get back, Electry. Blitzen ain't a-goin' to stand everything. Sometimes it does seem's if you had the most cheek of any critter in feathers. Well, look at that now!" for Blitzen, exasperated at a raid upon his plate, jumped at the chicken, who quick as thought hopped on his back, and clung to her perch by means of claw and wing while the terrier raced in a mad circle.
Aunt Love's hearty laugh rang out as she watched Blitzen's fruitless efforts to disembarrass himself. At last he lay down and rolled over, and Electra, squawking excitedly, ran back to her plate.
She was not pursued. The terrier ever afterward regarded her as something uncanny, and so far as possible refrained from acknowledging her existence.
An event of general interest during the Fair summer was the visit to the Exposition of the West Point cadets. Cro' Nest itself is scarcely more immovable from its position among the Highlands of the Hudson than these pets of Uncle Sam; but it is a matter of history that they and their paraphernalia were transferred to the Philadelphia Centennial, and now again with much form and ceremony their camp was set up in the green plain adjoining the Government Building on the shore of Lake Michigan. They arrived one dazzling afternoon, which began serenely calm, but toward evening gave the guests a northeast wind which sent white-capped waves rushing landward, and shook the tents in the new company-streets.
Starting from the Terminal Station, the young soldiers marched through the streets of the White City, preceded by their famous band, and as they proceeded looked neither to the right nor the left at the widely noised marvels surrounding them, but kept eyes front as though still treading their own quiet, elm-lined avenues, while the waiting crowds cheered and cheered again the elegant precision of their movements.
In an hour, gray-coated sentinels were again walking post in this new Camp Sheridan, alertly conscious of their routine business, and apparently without a thought of the surroundings beyond the camp.
Mildred Bryant felt considerable interest in the cadets, and assumed much more. "Helen Eames says that no matter how good a time a girl may have, she can never have as good a one as if she had spent a summer at West Point," she announced to Van Tassel one day, on the occasion of their being together. She felt that he made these occasions rare, and at times the fact touched her. At others she said to herself, "He is getting over it."
"Then why don't you go there?" asked Jack. "I don't know who has a better right to the flowers of life."
"I did think of getting Clover to take me next summer, but now, wonder of wonders, the mountain has come to Mahomet. Don't you want to go down to parade to-night?"
"Yes; I don't know just how to make you comfortable, though. The mob is something marvelous. I looked over their heads a minute last night, but being in the sixth or seventh row, concluded the game wasn't worth the candle."