“Indeed!” remarked Dorothy very quietly.
“Yes. They were talking together and they didn’t see me. What do you think I did, Dorothy?”
“Now you are asking a riddle, Trixy,” replied Dorothy. “You waited until they came up, I suppose, and then monopolized their attention during the rest of the promenade!”
“All wrong—all wrong!” cried Beatrice gayly; “nothing of the kind! Right back of my seat was a big tree, or bush—as high as this room and half as big around. Watching them closely and being quite sure they hadn’t seen me, I crept around to the back of that bush and hid.”
“Hid!” exclaimed Dorothy in astonishment; “why, what was your object in doing that?”
“Just this,” said Beatrice, with a merry laugh; “I thought they might take the seat I had left and, if they did, what fun it would be to creep up behind them and drop a few grains of gravel down the collar of Ralph’s uniform.”
“Oh, the idea!” exclaimed Dorothy, with a shocked air. “And, Trixy,” severely, “since when have you taken to calling the officers of the Guard by their first names?”
“Captain Swords, I should say, of course,” replied Beatrice, not in the least abashed; “but he’s so jolly and all his brother officers call him Ralph. It seems so much easier to call him that. What a brave fellow he must be, too! Captain Bingham was telling me how he—Ral—Captain Swords, I mean—rode out to retake the abandoned guns at Vladivik and how he was wounded. Oh, I just thrilled as I listened to that story.”
“Yes,” exclaimed Dorothy, apparently catching Beatrice’s enthusiasm, “but Captain Mortimer was there, too. It was he, after all, who brought in the guns and, though wounded, carried Captain Swords from under the Russian fire.”
“Yes; and Ralph—Captain Swords, I mean—was decorated with the Columbia Cross,” said Beatrice.