"Oh, don't you remember? I told you about it yesterday—such a dreadful service—no salary—articles for three years—cargo of salt to China!"
"Yes, yes, to be sure; I remember. He does not care for his appointment. Tell him he may write to cancel it at once; I'll make it right at head-quarters for him; and then we must find him a more suitable berth on shore."
"Oh, thank you, thank you! How very kind you are!"
She is about to move away; but he lays his hand on her shoulder.
"Wait a moment; you're not half rested. You—you will try to like me a little, won't you, Addie?"
"Oh, yes!" she answers fervently, her shining eyes looking straight into his. "I will begin at once, and try as hard as ever I can to like you, Mr. Armstrong; you are so very kind!"
With a laugh that is half a sigh his hands drop and he turns away.
"I'm a fool, a fool—a blind, besotted fool!" he says to himself a little later. "I wish I could throw it all up; I wish I had the strength of mind. It won't do—it won't do! I shall live to reap in remorse and sorrow what I've sown in doubt and weakness—something tells me I shall. Well, well, so be it, so be it! I must go through with it now to the end, come what may."
Addie somewhat sulkily imparts the good news to her family, and then goes up to her room, locks the door, and lifts from the bottom of her trunk her cracked old papier-mâché desk, from which she takes a photograph wrapped in tissue paper, with the remains of a gloire de Dijon rose that was nipped from the parent-stem one soft June night three years before and fastened near her throat by warm boyish fingers—cousinly, not brotherly fingers. She scatters its loose stained petals out of the window, and then takes a long look at the picture of her soldier-cousin, Edward Lefroy, who spent a month at Nutsgrove the last time the colonel visited his home.