"I'm going to keep thinking of you and seeing your face—the face of a good woman—while I fight. And when the war is over, may I come to call?" he asked.
His feet were so resolutely planted on the flags that apparently the only way to move them was to consent.
"Yes, yes!" said Minna. "Now, hurry!"
"Say, but you make me happy! Watch me poke it into the Grays for you!" he cried and bolted.
"It seems to me that he is the biggest, most ridiculous man I ever saw!" said Minna, as she watched him out of sight. "I'm tired, just tired to death, aren't you?" she added to Marta.
"Exactly!" agreed Marta. "I feel as if I had worked my way through hell to heaven and heaven was the chance to sleep."
Within the kitchen Mrs. Galland was already slumbering soundly in her chair. Overhead Marta heard the exclamations of male voices and the tread of what was literally the heel of the conqueror—guests that had come without asking! Intruders that had entered without any process of law! Would they overrun the house, her mother's room, her own room?
Indignation brought fresh strength as she started up the stairs. The head of the flight gave on to a dark part of the hall. There she paused, held by the scene that a score or more of Gray soldiers, who had riotously crowded into the dining-room, were enacting.