ham caught at the name of Frobisher. "Mrs. Major Dick
Frobisher?"

"Mrs. Colonel now, but Dick always," said the lady, with immediate
comradery. "Do you know my husband?"

"I should think so!" said Bellingham; and a talk of common interest
and mutual reminiscence sprang up between them. Bellingham graphically
depicted his meeting with Colonel Frobisher the last time he was out on
the Plains, and Mrs. Frobisher and Miss Wrayne discovered to their great
satisfaction that he was the brother of Mrs. Stephen Blake, of Omaba,
who had come out to the fort once with her husband, and captured
the garrison, as they said. Mrs. Frobisher accounted for her present
separation from her husband, and said she had come on for a while to be
with her father and sister, who both needed more looking after than the
Indians. Her father had left the army, and was building railroads.

Miss Wrayne, when she was not appealed to for confirmation or
recollection by her sister, was having a lively talk with Corey and Mrs.
Brinkley; she seemed to enter into their humour; and no one paid much
attention to Dan Mavering. He hung upon the outskirts of the little
group; proffering unrequited sympathy and applause; and at last he
murmured something about having to go back to some friends, and took
himself off. Mrs. Frobisher and Miss Wrayne let him go with a certain
shade--the lightest, and yet evident--of not wholly satisfied pique:
women know how to accept a reparation on account, and without giving a
receipt in full.

Mrs. Brinkley gave him her hand with an effect of compassionate
intelligence and appreciation of the sacrifice he must have made in
leaving Alice. "May I congratulate you?" she murmured.

"Oh yes, indeed; thank you, Mrs. Brinkley," he gushed tremulously; and
he pressed her hand hard, and clung to it, as if he would like to take
her with him.

Neither of the older men noticed his going. They were both taken
in their elderly way with these two handsome young women, and they
professed regret--Bellingham that his mother was not there, and Corey
that neither his wife nor daughters had come, whom they might otherwise
have introduced. They did not offer to share their acquaintance with any
one else, but they made the most of it themselves, as if knowing a good
thing when they had it. Their devotion to Mrs. Frobisher and her sister
heightened the curiosity of such people as noticed it, but it would
be wrong to say that it moved any in that s