"Oh, mother, please leave that to Mrs. Barrington! Let us be comrades for these few days."
"Dearest, it would be the happiness of my life to be never anything but a comrade. But who is to nag a girl if not her mother? I very much doubt if Mrs. Barrington will condescend to speak of your boot-soles. She will expect all that to have been attended to long ago."
"It has been—a thousand years ago. Sometimes I feel that I'm all boot-soles."
"The moment I see some result, dear, I shall be satisfied. One doesn't speak of such things for their own sake."
"Can't we get a paper?" asked Elsie. "What is that they are shouting?"
"I don't think it can be anything new. We brought these papers with us on the train. But we can see. No; it's just what we had this morning. They are preparing for a general assault. There will be heavy fighting to-morrow. Why, that is to-day!" Mrs. Valentin held the newspaper at arm's length.
"Is there anything more? I can read only the head-lines."
The girl took the paper and looked at it with a certain reluctance, narrowing her eyelids.
"Mother, there was something else in Gladys's letter. Billy Castant has enlisted with the Rough Riders. He was in that fight at Las Guasimas, while we were packing our trunks. He did badly again in his exams, and he—he didn't go home; he just enlisted."
"The foolish fellow!" Mrs. Valentin exclaimed. A sharp intuition told her there was trouble in the wind, and defensively she turned upon the presumptive cause. "The foolish boy! What he needs is an education. But he won't work for it. It's easier to go off mad and be a Rough Rider."