But the little girl only laughed good humoredly, and said: "Jimmy and I belong to the Seventh Regiment, and drill in the last fashion. Don't you want to come and learn the Lefferts Tactics?"
Wasn't she a nice little thing! Never got mad or anything, but just gave me back as good as I sent. I declare, I fell right smack in love with her that minute, and I don't care a fig now for the girl I met in dancing school, upon my word I don't; so I rushed back into the kitchen, coaxed the cook to give me two more hunks of gingerbread, and called out, "Won't you have some cake?"
They came running up on the piazza like lamplighters; and while they were eating the gingerbread, I was eating something I got especially for myself at the same time. Did you ever try it? You have a great big sour apple, as cold as it can be, and a tremendous pickled pepper, as hot as it can be; then you take first a bite of the pepper, and nearly burn all the skin off your throat, and then a bite of the apple to cool it again; and so on. It's gorgeous, I tell you!
Presently the little boy (whose name, as I said, was Jimmy), stopped his eating to ask me, "Do you live in New York?"
"No, I live at White Plains. I go to the Military Academy there; don't you want me to show you some drill?"
"Oh, Cousin Charley is going to teach us some time. He belongs to the Seventh Regiment. We love to be soldiers, though, and we know a boy, Freddy Jourdain his name is, who got up a whole regiment, and has parades, and went into camp, and everything."
"We have a camp at White Plains," I told them. "Do you ever go there in summer, Miss——" here I stopped, rather awkwardly, not knowing what her name was.
"Oh, I'm not 'Miss' anybody;" she said; "I'm Nelly; but we go to the seashore in summer 'most always."
"Can't you dress up in your uniform, and show us how you look at school?" said Jimmy.
"Yes, if you like;" here I remembered that the key of my room was in Aunt Elsie's pocket, and had to say, "but I can't get into my room now; I was locked in, and Aunt Elsie has the key."