"I thought you were going to—to borrow," stammered the other.
"Hardly!" The Ensign stopped and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. "Suffering Moses!" he said, "wouldn't she be mad!"
"Yes, I think she would, but I don't see why. She lets you lead Queen, doesn't she?"
"Oh, Lord, yes! I'm allowed to lead the beast twenty times around the Fort every day for exercise—she said we both needed it, and she didn't want to ride while it was so hot,—but she particularly impressed it upon me that under no circumstances was I to mount. A groom—a stable boy,—that's what she thinks I am! I believe I'll tell her to lead her own nag!"
"I wouldn't," returned Forsyth.
"Why not?" demanded the other. "What do you know about women?"
"Not very much," admitted Robert, laughing; "but we're all at sea there, I fancy."
Gradually Ronald's temper improved, and in a short time he was his sunny self again. Peace dwelt in the woods along the river, and where the young officer stretched himself full length under an overhanging willow, the quiet coolness of the unsunned spaces put an end, insensibly, to his irritation.
"Say," he said, "did you ever write poetry?"
Forsyth smiled, remembering certain callow attempts in his college days. "Yes, I called it that."