“About that ball?” said he, on a night in the following week, when a half-dozen of us had bunched ourselves before one of old Sam’s master-pieces of fire-building, up in The Battery. “Oh, well, it was a big ball, a broad-and-wide ball, a very large ball indeed. You missed it by not going. The armory was decorated right up to the vanishing-point—out of sight, in fact. There were brass twelve-pounders on each side of the Governor’s box, like signs to call attention to the big guns inside of it; and there were oceans of bunting; and all the regimental colors that The Fourth has had issued to it in the last thirty years; and jungles of palms and other green things; and girls—yes, there were girls, of course.
“There was one girl— Never mind: that wouldn’t interest you fellows. But perhaps you’d like to hear about the supper. There was a very nourishing supper, so they tell me. I didn’t stay for it, though.”
With our knowledge of the quartermaster’s customary prowess at the banquet table, this last statement seemed to call for farther explanation. We ventured to ask him about it.
“Why did I cut that supper? Well, because I wanted to. Why did I want to? H’m! you’re hot for information, aren’t you? But perhaps I may as well tell you. If I don’t, somebody else will; and if it has to be told, I’d prefer to have it told truthfully.
“It was all on account of that girl—that one girl. I’m not ashamed to admit that it was a case of utter annihilation at first sight. I had hardly stepped out upon the armory floor, when my eye fell on her; and from that instant I knew that, for me, there wasn’t another girl in that whole hall—no, nor in the whole wide world. ‘See anybody you’d like to meet?’ says Major Brayton, who had me under his wing. ‘Yes, present me to that stunning girl in yellow,’ says I, like a flash; ‘that girl sitting over there beside the stout woman in black.’ Confound Brayton! he might have warned me. But he didn’t: he only grinned and said ‘Perhaps you’d better get Erwin to take you up. But come along with me, I’ll risk it.’
“Whew! she was a tearing beauty. Big, soft, brown eyes, and a regular cloud of wavy, brown hair to match, and a general effect of having just stepped out of one of Gibson’s drawings. When the major presented me, my heart was thumping like a bass-drum. Fact! Her name? I didn’t quite catch it. But I captured her card, and signed contracts for a waltz, and some sort of country-dance just after it, and another waltz well along towards the end of the list. How did I score her down on my card? Why, I just scratched down ‘D’—which might have stood for most anything.
“Well, we floated through the waltz. It was a treat, for she was a divine dancer, as I’d thought she’d be. When the country-dance came along, I suggested that we’d do well to hunt up some place in the gallery from which we could look down upon it, explaining that I was a little weak in my minor tactics, and really didn’t feel up to getting tangled in any such complicated manœuvres unless I had a book of directions with me. So up to the gallery we went, and I found an ideal corner, all hidden by bunting draperies, and palms and things.
“And there we sat—just we two—in a ready-made paradise of our own, utterly forgetful of the crush of prancing idiots who were toiling away on the floor below us. H’m! I think I must have lost my head completely. I said all sorts of things. As a matter of fact, I can’t begin to remember half what I did say. I only know that finally the music stopped, and she rose with a sigh. ‘Can’t I steal this next dance?’ says I, taking her card from her to see who the lucky man was that had it. ‘No,’ says she softly, ‘I’m afraid that it wouldn’t be possible.’ I glanced at the card, and for the first time noticed that the next dance and fully two-thirds of the others were labelled ‘J. E.’, in a painfully distinct and careful hand.
“And while I was assimilating this interesting fact, who should come blundering into our little, private paradise but Jack Erwin, first lieutenant of ‘C’, Fourth. You don’t know him? Wish I didn’t! ‘Hello! Woodleigh, old man,’ says he, grabbing my paw. ‘Found you at last. They told me you were doing guard duty for me. Well, I’m waiting to be congratulated.’
“‘I beg pardon, Jack,’ says I; ‘promotion?’ And then he laughed—one of those silly, cheerful, lover’s laughs—and tucked my girl’s slender little hand under his arm. ‘No,’ says he; ‘or, rather, yes. Hadn’t you heard of my engagement?’ And he smiled down on the girl in a way that made me wild to toss him over the balcony railing.