On that particular day, as a bright winter sun shone down on the long parade ground, Norma thought only of the old fort and what it stood for.
It was quite ancient, but just how old, she could not tell. Always a lover of horses, she tried to picture the parade ground in those old days when a thousand, perhaps two thousand men, all mounted on glorious cavalry horses, came riding down that stretch of green.
“Dignified officers in the lead—band playing and horses prancing! What a picture!” she murmured.
On each side of the parade ground were rows of red brick buildings. On the right side had been the homes of officers. Now these were occupied by the officers of the school.
On the opposite side were barracks occupied by officer candidates in training.
“That’s where I’d be training,” she thought with a little thrill, “if I applied for entrance and was accepted.”
On bright, warm days, she had been told, the whole school, six thousand strong, assembled on the parade ground and marched down the field. “That,” she thought, “would be glorious!” She hoped that they would have fine weather before she went away.
It was after drill was over that a rather strange thing happened. There was, she had discovered, an air of grim, serious determination about this place that was almost depressing. You seldom heard a laugh. There was always the tramp-tramp of feet.
Even now, when her squad of ten had been put on their own, and they were headed for the Service Club for a bottle of coke or a cup of hot chocolate, they were still going tramp-tramp, in regular file.
“It’s a little bit too much!” she thought.