“Hurrah! Marie—Marie!”
And there was to be seen the spectacle of “a young lady in fashionable attire,” shaking the hands of a score of common soldiers, and giving to special favorites a friendly dig in the ribs with her fair little fingers.
Common soldiers, all but one—Tony!
Hopeless despair is sometimes success. Tony, fighting madly for welcome death, lived throughout all to be Captain Tony, and to wear a cross of valor.
She immediately, after a few confidential words with the captain, proposed comfort of an ardent kind to the soldiers. “Aye! Aye,” said they “where’s your keg, Marie?” And then and there the vivandiere’s keg appeared in the person of the butler, who came to the door trembling.
And the next moment he was borne off in trembling triumph to the assault of his own cellars.
Marie was not the girl to give way to much sentiment, so the next moment or so she was talking briskly with her old comrades.
“So, here we three are again, eh!”
“Yes, Marie, as in the old days.”
“How long ago they seem, Sulpice. And so you are a captain, Tony.”