The most engaging of smiles parted the young widow's lips.
"Good morning, Captain Lent," she cried gaily. "You have neglected
me dreadfully of late."
The Captain came to a rigid salute.
"April eleventh, eighteen-sixty-one!" he said with clean-cut
precision. "Good morning, Mrs. Paige! How does your garden blow?
Blow--blow ye wintry winds! Ahem! How have the roses
wintered--the rose of yesterday?"
"Oh, I don't know, sir. I am afraid my sister's roses have not
wintered very well. I'm really a little worried about them."
"I am worried about nothing in Heaven, on Earth, or in Hell,"
said the Captain briskly. "God's will is doing night and day, Mrs.
Paige. Has your brother-in-law gone to business?"
"Oh, yes. He and Stephen went at eight this morning."
"Is your sister-in-law well. God bless her!" shouted the Captain.
"Uncle, you mustn't shout," remonstrated Camilla gently.
"I'm only exercising my voice,"--and to Ailsa:
"I neglect nothing, mental, physical, spiritual, that may be of the
slightest advantage to my country in the hour when every
respiration, every pulse beat, every waking thought shall belong to
the Government which I again shall have the honour of serving."
He bowed stiffly from the waist, to Ailsa, to his niece, turned
right about, and marched off into the house, his white moustache
bristling, his hair on end.
"Oh, dear," sighed Camilla patiently, "isn't it disheartening?"
"He is a dear," said Ailsa. "I adore him."
"Yes--if he'd only sleep at night. I am very selfish I suppose to
complain; he is so happy and so interested these days--only--I am
wondering--if there ever should be a war--would it break his poor
old heart if he couldn't go? They'll never let him, you know."
Ailsa looked up, troubled:
"You mean--because!" she said in a low voice.
"Well I don't consider him anything more than delightfully
eccentric."
"Neither do I. But all this is worrying me ill. His heart is so
entirely wrapped up in it; he writes a letter to Washington every
day, and nobody ever replies. Ailsa, it almost terrifies me to
think what might happen--and he be left out!"
"Nothing will happen. The world is too civilised, dear."
"But the papers talk about nothing else! And uncle takes every
paper in New York and Brooklyn, and he wants to have the editor of
the Herald arrested, and he is very anxious to hang the entire
staff of the Daily News. It's all well enough to stand there
laughing, but I believe there'll be a war, and then my troubles
will begin!"