"By George," responded the lieutenant, eagerly, "how can I help it? She's divine!"
"A great many others think so, too, Fred—I do myself—but they don't make it so plagued evident on short acquaintance. Behave yourself, now—your eyesight is good—sit down and play the agreeable to some old lady, and look at Mrs. Wittleday across the room, as often as you like."
The lieutenant was young; his face was not under good control, and he had no whiskers, and very little mustache to hide it, so, although he obeyed the order of his superior, it was with a visage so mournful that the major imagined, when once or twice he caught Mrs. Wittleday's eye, that that handsome lady was suffering from restrained laughter.
Humorous as the affair had seemed to the major before, he could not endure to have his preserver's sorrow the cause of merriment in any one else; so, deputing Parson Fisher to make their excuse to the hostess when it became possible to penetrate the crowd which had slowly surrounded her, the major took his friend's arm and returned to the cottage.
"Major!" exclaimed the subaltern, "I—I half wish I'd let that Indian catch you; then you wouldn't have spoiled the pleasantest evening I ever had—ever began to have, I should say."
"You wouldn't have had an evening at East Patten then, Fred," said the major, with a laugh, as he passed the cigars, and lit one himself. "Seriously, my boy, you must be more careful. You came here to spend a pleasant three months with me, and the first time you're in society you act, to a lady you never saw before, too, in such a way, that if it had been any one but a lady of experience, she would have imagined you in love with her."
"I am in love with her," declared the young man, with a look which was intended to be defiant, but which was noticeably shamedfaced. "I'm going to tell her so, too—that is, I'm going to write her about it."
"Steady, Fred—steady!" urged the major, kindly. "She'd be more provoked than pleased. Don't you suppose fifty men have worshiped her at first sight? They have, and she knows it, too—but it hasn't troubled her mind at all: handsome women know they turn men's heads in that way, and they generally respect the men who are sensible enough to hold their tongues about it, at least until there's acquaintance enough between them to justify a little confidence."
"Major," said poor Fred, very meekly, almost piteously, "don't—don't you suppose I could make her care something for me?"
The major looked thoughtfully, and then tenderly, at the cigar he held between his fingers. Finally he said, very gently: