"Yes; do you want me to join the Knights?"
"No, not precisely. But you see, they have a ball every year in connection with the festival, with a queen and maids of honor. I guess you've never seen one of these things, as they have them in October, and you've always been away at school. Now the committee on entertainment has been after me to see if you'd be queen of the ball this year—"
"Oh!—" ominously.
"Just hold on a minute." He was wholly at ease now, and assumed the manner which he had found effective in dealing with obstreperous customers of his bank. "I'm free to say that I don't like the idea of this myself particularly. There's a lot of publicity about it and you know I don't like that—and the newspapers make an awful fuss. But you see it isn't wise for us"—he laid emphasis on the pronoun—"to set up to be better than other people. Now", with a twinkle in his eye, "you turned down this School Board business the other day and said you wanted to have a good time, just like other girls, and I reckon most of the girls in town would be tickled at a chance like this—"
"And you want me to do it, father? Is that what you mean? But it must be perfectly awful,—the crowd and the foolish mummery."
"Well, there's one thing sure, you'll never have to do it a second time." Porter smiled reassuringly.
"But I haven't said I'd do it once, father."
"I'd like to have you; I'd like it very much, and should appreciate your doing it. But don't say anything about it." Some callers were coming up the walk, so the matter was dropped. Porter recurred to the subject again next day, and Evelyn saw that he wished very much to have her take part in the carnival, but the idea did not grow pleasanter as she considered it. It was quite true, as she had told her father, that she wanted to enjoy herself after the manner of other young women, and without constant reference to her advantages, as she had heard them called; but the thought of a public appearance in what she felt to be a very ridiculous function did not please her. On the other hand, her father rarely asked anything of her and he would not have made this request without considering it carefully beforehand.
In her uncertainty she went for advice to Mrs. Whipple, the wife of a retired army officer, who had been her mother's friend. Mrs. Whipple was a woman of wide social experience and unusual common sense. She had settled in her day many of those distressing complications which arise at military posts in times of national peace. Young officers still came to her for advice in their love affairs, which she always took seriously, but not too seriously. Warry Raridan maintained unjustly that Mrs. Whipple's advice was bad, but that it did the soul good to see how much joy she got out of giving it. The army had communicated both social dignity and liveliness to Clarkson, as to many western cities which had military posts for neighbors. In the old times when civilians were busy with the struggle for bread and had little opportunity for social recreation, army men and women had leisure for a punctilious courtesy. The mule-drawn ambulance was a picturesque feature of the urban landscape as it bore the army women about the rough streets of the new cities; it was not elegant, but it was so eminently respectable! There might be an occasional colonel that was a snob, or a major that drank too much; or a Mrs. Colonel who was a trifle too conscious of her rights over her sisters at the Post, or a Mrs. Major whose syntax was unbearable; but the stars and stripes covered them all, even as they cover worse people and worse errors in our civil administrators.
It gave Evelyn a pleasant sensation to find herself again in the little Whipple parlor. The furniture was the same that she remembered of old in the commandant's house at the fort. It had at last found repose, for the Whipples' marching days were over. They made an effort to have an Indian room, where they kept their books, but they refrained from calling the place a library. On the walls were the headdress of a Sioux chief, and a few colored photographs of red men; the couch was covered with a Navajo blanket, and on the floor were wolf and bear skins. When chairs were needed for callers, the general brought them in from other rooms; he himself sat in a canvas camp chair, which he said was more comfortable than any other kind, but which was prone to collapse under a civilian. The wastepaper-basket by the general's table, and a basket for fire-wood were of Indian make, dyed in dull shades of red and green.