onel sat with his
eyes glued to the _Army and Navy Journal_. He was reading about a
proposed increase in pay, and he had no interest in small boys. Across
the sandy space on the porch of the opposite quarters two ladies sat
embroidering.

In the Sherman quarters, he could hear Mrs. Sherman and Bill and Lee
talking as they finished packing Bill's trunk.

No one noticed Frank. No one saw what he did next, so stealthily and
rapidly. But in a moment he put the receiver down on the shelf, hurried
to the Shermans' door, and called for Lee.

"Someone wants you on the phone," Frank said, and as Lee hurried out,
Frank sat down on the door sill and whistled shrilly to the Shermans'
Airdale, who was trying to chum with the pretty ladies across the way.
They looked up, saw Lee at the phone but did not see Frank who had
dodged inside the door. The Colonel looked up from his paper, scowling.
He laid the whistle to Lee and glared.

Lee called "Hello!" half a dozen times. He too leaned on the sill of the
open window. No one answering the phone, he hung up and went back to the
packing.

And the next morning, Bill and Frank, feeling fearfully overdressed in
new suits, and bearing spotless shiny yellow suitcases, stood on the
train waving to two rather damp looking mothers and two fathers who
stood up almost _too_ straight, and started away on their long journey.

Lee did not wave at them. The half of Lee that was Indian was afraid
that the half that was white would look too sorry and lonesome if he
stood on the platform watching the two small figures waving on the train
while a friendly porter clutched a shoulder of each. So Lee stayed in
the machine and listened as the train pulled out, and felt very blue and
lonesome, and fell to planning how he would ask for a furlough and go
shoot some wildcats to make rugs for Bill's room. And he wondered how
soon the boys would look inside their suitcases. Lee had opened both
those suitcases!

The boys, wildly excited over the charm and novelty of travelling alone,
went to their seats and gravely studied the flat bleakness of Oklahoma.
As yet they had no regrets at leaving the Post, although Bill felt
rather low whenever he thought of his mother. Her picture, as radiant
and lovely as any of the girls who came visiting on the Post, he had
pasted on the dial of his wrist watch, the Major helping. They had had
lots of fun doing it, the Major pretending to be awfully jealous. But
when the pict