"Quite aside from your duty?"
"Entirely so. My duty in this case happened to be my inclination. I could have declined the detail, but being a believer in the army's arrangement of Indian affairs, I couldn't decently refuse."
Brisbane settled back into his chair and looked straight at his visitor.
"You think the white man the aggressor in this land question?"
Curtis definitely pulled himself up. "I am not at liberty to speak further on that matter."
Mrs. Wilcox interrupted smilingly. "Andrew, don't start an argument now. Dinner is served, and I know Captain Curtis is hungry."
Elsie rose. "Yes, papa, leave your discussion till some other time, when you can bang the furniture."
Curtis expected to take Miss Cooke in to dinner, but Elsie delighted him by saying, "You're to go in with me, Captain."
"I am very glad of the privilege," he said, with deliberate intent to please her; his sincerity was unquestionable.
Curtis would have been more profoundly impressed with the spaciousness of the hall and the dining-room had they been less like the interior of a hotel. The whole house, so far as its mural decoration went, had the over-stuffed quality of a Pullman car (with the exception of the pictures on the walls, which were exceedingly good), for Brisbane had successfully opposed all of Elsie's new-fangled notions with regard to interior decoration; he was of those who insist on being masters in their houses as well as in their business offices, and Elsie's manner was that of an obedient daughter deferring to a sire who had not ceased to consider her a child.