“Why, yes, indeed. Surely you have noticed it? Mamma is always so careful about my associates, but she cannot help being perfectly delighted with Margaret. Don’t you like her?”
“I certainly do.”
“I thought you must, for you were so good last fall at the time of our class elections. Margaret has made an ideal president.”
Then the conversation became general again, much to Dolly’s relief. In some way the subject branched off to military men, and Margaret was appealed to.
“Were any of your relatives army men, Miss Hamilton? And don’t you think that they are the finest men in the world?”
“I have not been blessed with many relations, Miss Fox, and so I have not had the chance to have military men in my own family and to know them intimately, as some of you have done. Of course, I admire them. Some of my ancestors were in the wars of 1776 and 1812, but I never saw them. My own father was anxious to be a military man and he entered West Point. He had a splendid record there, and was in love with the life, when he met with an accident out yachting that ruined his health, left him a trifle lame, and forced him to give up all thoughts of a military life. He never got over the disappointment.”
There was a general expression of sympathy, and Margaret found herself the target for more questions than she cared to answer. In such a babel of voices, however, it was easy to disregard any which she did not choose to hear, so that she extricated herself serenely from a position which Dolly knew to be rather trying.
It was late, and as Charlotte’s cakes and pickles had been demolished, the girls separated presently.
“You think that Margaret’s story was quite true?” Beth asked as they slowly paced the corridor on the way back to their rooms.
“I’m sure of it. Of course, her ancestors may have been privates in the wars of 1776 and 1812, but still they would have been soldiers all the same.”