"Is that a dig at me, ma'am?"

At that moment Moya came out upon the porch.

She was very striking with the high color and brilliant eyes that
mail-time fever breeds. Christine looked at her with freshly aroused
curiosity, moved by her mother's unwonted burst of praise. The faintest
tinge of jealousy made her feel naughty. As Moya went down the board walk,
the colonel's orderly came springing up the steps to meet her with the
mail-bag. He saluted and turned off at an angle down the embankment not to
present his back to the ladies.

"Did you see that! He never raised his eyes. They are like priests. You
can't make them look at you." Moya looked at Christine in amazement. The
man himself might have heard her. It was not the first time this
privileged guest had rubbed against garrison customs in certain directions
hardly worth mentioning. Moya hesitated. Then she laughed a little, and
said: "Only a raw recruity would look at an officer's daughter, or any
lady of the line."

"Oh, you horrid little aristocrat! Well, I look at them, when they are as
pretty as that one, and I forgive them if they look at me."

Moya turned and hovered over the contents of the mail-bag. In the exercise
of one of her prerogatives, it was her habit to sort its contents before
delivering it at the official door.

"All, all for you!" she offered a huge packet of letters, smiling, to Mrs.
Bogardus. It was faced with one on top in Paul's handwriting. "All but
one," she added, and proceeded to open her own much fatter one in the same