“Be ’round in a jiffy,” and so he was.
“That was very tactful of you, Helen,” said Cousin Lizzie lugubriously. “You know ‘Misery loves company.’” But a peal from the front door bell interrupted further quotations and Lewis Somerville came tearing into the house in answer to Helen’s S. O. S.
He did look as dejected as one of his make-up could. It is hard to be dejected very long when one is just twenty, in perfect health, with naturally high spirits and the strength to remove mountains tingling in the veins. A jury of women could not have shipped the young would-be soldier, and it must have taken very hard-hearted men, very determined on maintaining discipline, deliberately to have cut this young fellow’s career in two. Our army must be full of very fine young men if they can so lightly give up such a specimen as this Lewis Somerville. Imagine a young giant of noble proportions, as erect as an ash sapling that has had all the needed room in which to grow, a head like Antinous and frank blue eyes that could no more have harbored a lie than that well-cut, honest mouth could have spoken one.
“I didn’t do it and just to let me know that you don’t believe I did, you have got to kiss me all around.”
“Nonsense, Lewis! Helen and I are too old to kiss you even if you are a cousin,” and Douglas got behind Cousin Lizzie.
“Quite right, Douglas, ‘The heart of the prudent getteth knowledge.’ Lewis is not such very close kin, besides.”
“Why, Aunt Lizzie, I did not expect you to desert me.”
“‘It is not good to eat much honey, so for men to search their own glory is not glory.’”
“Well, Nan and Lucy will kiss me, anyhow. They believe I did not do it.”