"Well, that wasn't a lie was it, Mother?" Hal threw up the lid and lifted out a tray. "Now, wade into 'em. Look 'em over to your heart's content. Here's the dress sword. Isn't it a beauty?"
Gripping the scabbard with his left hand, Hal drew out the handsome blade with a flourish.
"Ugh! I don't like it, except to look at," shuddered his mother. "I hope my son will never have any need to cut up a fellow-being with that sword."
"Hardly likely," chuckled Hal. "An officer carries only a cane or a stick of some sort just in order that he may point out the location of the enemy, or to indicate some tree on the other side that he thinks has a sharp-shooter up among the foliage, and, of course, he wears his heavy service revolver."
"And an officer never leads a charge, flourishing his sword?"
"Hardly. The officer would be in too much danger from the bullets of his own men if he got in front of them."
"Then an officer isn't in so very much danger, after all," guessed Mrs. Overton, speaking in a tone of relief. "Some one in front of him will stop the bullets."
"No one man can stop a bullet that's going under full steam, Mother. At two or three hundred yards' range, to-day, a bullet will pass through six or eight men in succession, if there are that many men in its path."
"I—I guess I don't want to hear any more of that kind of stuff," shivered the little woman. "It all sounds—awfully dangerous!"
But Hal's mother was not idle. With the deft fingers of a woman she was lifting and laying out the handsome uniforms one by one.