Into Lindell Grove flocked the crowd, the rich and the poor, the proprietor and the salesmen, to watch the soldiers pitch their tents under the spreading trees. The gallant dragoons were off to the west, across a little stream which trickled through the grounds. By the side of it Virginia and Maude, enchanted, beheld Captain Colfax shouting his orders while his troopers dragged the canvas from the wagons, and staggered under it to the line. Alas! that the girls were there! The Captain lost his temper, his troopers, perspiring over Gordian knots in the ropes, uttered strange soldier oaths, while the mad wind which blew that day played a hundred pranks.
To the discomfiture of the young ladies, Colonel Carvel pulled his goatee and guffawed. Virginia was for moving away.
“How mean, Pa,” she said indignantly. “How car, you expect them to do it right the first day, and in this wind?”
“Oh! Jinny, look at Maurice!” exclaimed Maude, giggling. “He is pulled over on his head.”
The Colonel roared. And the gentlemen and ladies who were standing by laughed, too. Virginia did not laugh. It was all too serious for her.
“You will see that they can fight,” she said. “They can beat the Yankees and Dutch.”
This speech made the Colonel glance around him: Then he smiled,—in response to other smiles.
“My dear,” he said, “you must remember that this is a peaceable camp of instruction of the state militia. There fly the Stars and Stripes from the general's tent. Do you see that they are above the state flag? Jinny; you forget yourself.”
Jinny stamped her foot
“Oh, I hate dissimulation,” she cried, “Why can't we, say outright that we are going to run that detestable Captain Lyon and his Yankees and Hessians out of the Arsenal.”