"Said?" asked the General, looking up and frowning. "What could she say? Good-morning, I guess."
I wasn't afraid of his frown or of his hammer-and-tongs manner. I'd got behind both before now. I persisted.
"But I mean—what did you say to each other, like the day before—how did it all come out?"
"Oh, we couldn't do any love-making, if that's what you mean," he explained in a business-like way, "because the old man was on deck. And I had to leave in about ten minutes to ride back to join my command. That was all there was to it."
I sighed with disappointment. Of course I knew it was just an idyll of youth, a day long, and that the book was closed forty years before. But I could not bear to have it closed with a bang. Somewhere in the narrative had come to me the impression that the heroine of it had died young in those exciting war-times of long ago. I had a picture in my mind of the dancing eyes closed meekly in a last sleep; of the young officer's hand laid sorrowing on the bright halo of hair.
"Did you ever see the girl again?" I asked softly.
The General turned on me a quick, queer look. Fun was in it, and memory gave it gentleness; yet there was impatience, too, at my slowness, in the boyish brown eyes.
"Mrs. Carruthers has red hair," he said briefly.