A general must keep up discipline, you know, and when a girl is in an army she must do just as the others do.
"I get mixed 'bout right and left," admitted Ruth Baker cheerfully. "But I'm all right now, Sunny. See?"
"All right," approved Sunny Boy graciously. "Column left!"
The army swung to the left.
"Look here, I don't intend to have you children making a noise like this in front of my house!" The handsome glass-paneled door of the house before which the army was drilling had opened suddenly. A woman whom Sunny Boy afterward described to his mother as "awful big and tall" came out on the steps and frowned down at the children. "Why on earth do all the children in the neighborhood pick out my house to play around?" she continued fretfully.
Sunny Boy's army wanted very much to run home, but he showed no signs of running himself so they waited, huddled together in a frightened little group.
"Why don't you stay at your own homes to play?" persisted the woman.
The woman really wasn't very tall, not taller than Sunny Boy's own mother. She came out so unexpectedly and stared down at the children so crossly that she seemed taller than she was. She had near-sighted eyes, and wore big, thick-rimmed glasses, and these, too, made her look more severe.
"Well?" she demanded.
Sunny Boy stood at the foot of the steps and smiled at her. He knew she wasn't always upset like this.