At length she grew tired of watching, and gave her undivided attention to her lesson.
Two hours passed, and the colonel might have been seen coming from the adjutant’s office to his own quarters, with a brisk step and a radiant face, with full twenty years taken off his fifty.
“Good news, Dolly, my dear!” he said, bursting into the sitting-room. “Good news! Dispatches from Washington. Call all the children together to hear the good news.”
“Go, Judy, dear, and bring them,” exclaimed Mrs. Moseley in eager anticipation.
Judy flew to do her bidding, and soon the room was filled with the progeny of the military patriarch.
“Where’s Jim?” demanded the colonel, looking around.
“Here I am, father,” said the eldest son, entering the room at that moment.
“And Betty?”
“Here, father, behind you. So close to you that you can’t see me!”
“And Baby Lu?”