“Wait a few days and I’ll show you whether I’m a man or not,” said Billy, with insulted dignity. “Come, your mother is waiting for us at the corner.”
Mrs. Wilson stood among a group of boys chatting and joking. She belonged to the type of widows, fair, fat and frivolous. Time had dealt gently with her. She was still handsome in spite of her weight, and intensely jealous lest her serious daughter supplant her in the affections of the youth of Independence.
She greeted Billy with just the words to heal his wounded vanity.
“My! Billy, but you look serious and manly! I’d kiss you if the other boys were not here. You ought to be at the head of that line of white raiders to-night”—she dropped her voice to a whisper—“I’ll be making your disguise before long.”
Billy turned from Susie and devoted himself with dignity to her mother.
The widow lifted her hand in sudden warning.
“Sh! Billy, the enemy! There goes Stella Butler with that fat little detective whom the Judge has imported with the troops.”
“Captain” Suggs of the Secret Service was more than duly impressed with his importance as he forced his pudgy figure through the throng on the sidewalk, ostentatiously protecting Stella from the touch of the crowd.
“It’s arrant nonsense, Miss Stella,” he was saying, as they passed. “These Southern people are savages, I know——”
“Why, Captain, I’m a Southerner too,” said the girl archly.