"Daddy, I made up my mind when I was a little girl, a long time ago, that I would never marry any man that was not as good as you, my darling daddy!"
Fond fathers are generally won by these tender pleas. Broussard turned his head away as the Colonel drew his daughter to him; the passion of father-love was too sacred even for the eyes of a lover. On the way out they met Sergeant McGillicuddy, who tried to look unconscious.
"Congratulate me!" cried Broussard.
"I do, sir," replied the Sergeant, solemnly, "and if I may make bold to say it, the Colonel will make a father-in-law-and-a-half, sir."
This was enigmatic, but Broussard was too happy then to study enigmas.
That night, when the Colonel, limping a little, entered the ballroom he leaned upon Beverley's strong young arm, while on the other side was Mrs. Fortescue, always particularly radiant in evening dress. Broussard and Anita walked behind them. The news, as rashly announced by the After-Clap, that Mr. Broussard had kissed Anita, had spread like wildfire through the post. Everybody knew it, and everybody smiled upon Broussard and Anita; even second lieutenants who envied Broussard's luck; good wishes and kind congratulations were showered upon them.
It was a very gay ball; as Colonel Fortescue held, the sharp cold, the radiant arc lights, always going, the wall of ice by which the fort was surrounded, gave an edge to joy as well as to pain. To mark this last ball of the year the young officers introduced some of the prankish features of their happy cadet days.
At five minutes to midnight, when the great floor was a whirl of dainty young girls, their heads crowned with roses or with flashing ornaments that matched their sparkling eyes, and with dashing young officers, glittering in gold and blue, the band, with Neroda leading, stopped suddenly. A handsome young bugler appeared and in the midst of the tense silence the wonderful melody of "Taps," the last farewell, was played for the dying year. Then Anita, as the commanding officer's daughter, had the honor of turning off the lights. To-night she looked her sweetest, wearing a little white dancing gown that showed her satin-slippered feet. With Broussard escorting her, Anita walked the length of the long ballroom to the point where, with one touch of the hand every light went out in an instant of time, and the ballroom was plunged into the blackness of darkness and the stillness of silence.
The band then played softly the delicious waltz "Auf Wiedersehen," with its sweet promise of eternal meeting.
On the stroke of twelve came a great roar and reverberance from the outside and a dazzling flash of light blazed in at the window from a feu de joie on the plaza. At the same moment, the young bugler played the splendid fanfare that welcomes the dawn, the reveille. Broussard and Anita, looking into each others' smiling eyes, began the new year of their perfect happiness with the joyous echo of the silver trumpet proclaiming the coming of the sunrise.