and horses and dogs and clothes and fighting chickens.

Mrs. Fortescue waved Kettle away and marched into the hall, where she
met Colonel Fortescue coming out of his office.

"It's Broussard," she whispered to the Colonel.

Together they entered the long drawing-room. Broussard and Anita were
leaning forward; Anita's face was still deeply flushed. Her beloved
white dove fluttered, unnoticed, about her white-shod feet. When the
glass door opened and Colonel and Mrs. Fortescue entered the little
glass room, both Anita and Broussard started violently--a sign of
captive love.

Mrs. Fortescue was gracious, merely because she could not help it, and
the Colonel treated Broussard with the elaborate courtesy which a
Colonel shows to a subaltern and which makes the subaltern look and
feel the size of the head of a pin. Naturally, Broussard hastened his
leave-taking and received no invitation to remain, except from Anita's
eyes, shy and long-lashed.

When the Colonel and Mrs. Fortescue and Anita were sitting at the
softly-shaded round table in the dining-room, Anita's chair was close
to her father's--the two were never far apart when they could be close
together. Mrs. Fortescue wore around her white throat a locket with a
miniature in it of her boy soldier. He was to her what Anita was to
the Colonel, but being a stout-hearted woman she had sent her son away
to be a soldier and had worn a smile at parting. There was a strain of
the Spartan mother in this smiling daughter, wife, and mother of
soldiers.