“Perhaps I’m going to win you to my cause before you know it,” he ventured. “I’m going to show you something today that’s really worth while—”
“Meaning, of course,” she interrupted, “that the cause in which I am at present expending my thought and energy is not worth while—”
“I didn’t say that!” he protested. “And I most humbly apologize if I implied as much—”
“All the same you think it, sir—”
She stopped short in amazement at the sight of her brother Billy standing straight and fine beside Zonia at the door of the old Armory, a marshal’s sash across his shoulder, arrayed in a captain’s uniform of the Boy Scouts of America.
Zonia grasped her outstretched hand in loyal greeting, her eyes sparkling with pride at her uncle’s triumphant march beside her heroine.
Virginia’s gaze fixed Billy’s beaming countenance.
“Well, Mr. Sunny Jim!” she exclaimed, “will you kindly give an account of yourself. How long have you been a marshal of the empire?”
“Oh, ever so long, Virginia—Mr. Vassar didn’t know I was your brother, that’s all. I’m a captain now. I didn’t let you know ’cause I thought you might raise a rumpus. Father and mother know. They don’t care. I like it.”
He turned abruptly to Vassar and saluted.