been equally shared by all.

"_Adios_!" she gayly cried as the "assembly" rang out, loud and clear,
and waving their hands and raising their caps, the officers hastened to
join their commands. "_Adios_, till we meet in Manila."

"Do you _really_ think of going to the Philippines, Mrs. Garrison?"
queried a much older-looking, yet younger woman. "Why, _we_ were told the
General said that none of his staff would be allowed to take their
wives."

"Yet there are others!" laughed Mrs. Garrison, waving a dainty
handkerchief toward the troops now breaking into column of twos and
slowly climbing the stage. "Who would _want_ to go with that blessed old
undertaker? Good-by--_bon voyage_, Geordie," she cried, blowing a kiss to
the lieutenant at the head of the second troop, a youth who blushed and
looked confused at the attention thereby centered upon him, and who would
fain have shaken his fist, rather than waved the one unoccupied hand in
perfunctory reply. "When _I_ go I'll choose a ship with a band and broad
decks, not any such cramped old canal boat as the Portland."

"Oh! I thought perhaps your husband--" began the lady dubiously, but with
a significant glance at the silent faces about her.

"Who? Frank Garrison? Heavens! I haven't known what it was to have a
husband--since that poor dear boy went on staff duty," promptly answered
the diminutive center of attraction, a merry peal of laughter ringing
under the dingy archway of the long, long roof. "Why, the Portland has
only one stateroom in it big enough for a bandbox, and of course the
General has to have that, and there isn't a deck where one couple could
turn a slow waltz. No, indeed! wait for the next flotilla, when _our_
fellows go, bands and all. _Then_ we'll see."

"But surely, Mrs. Garrison, we are told the War Department has positively
forbidden officers' wives from going on the transports"--again began her
interrogator, a wistful look in her tired eyes. "I know I'd give
_anything_ to join Mr. Dutton."

"The War Department has to take orders quite as often as it gives them,
Mrs. Dutton. The thing is to know how to be of the order-giving side. Oh,
joy!" she suddenly cried. "Here are the Primes and Amy Lawrence--then the
regiments must be coming! And there's Stanley Armstrong!"

Far up the westward street the distant roar of voices mingled with the
swing and rhythm and crash of martial music. Dock policemen and soldiers
on guard began boring a wide lane through