n, perhaps, will realize that you
were very unjust. Should that time come I shall be glad to have this
again."

It was hardly necessary to open the little packet as she did. She knew
well enough it could contain only that

"Knot of ribbon blue."

CHAPTER IV.

"THE WOMAN TEMPTED ME."

June is here. The examinations are in full blast. The Point is thronged
with visitors and every hostelrie in the neighborhood has opened wide
its doors to accommodate the swarms of people interested in the
graduating exercises and eager for the graduating ball. Pretty girls
there are in force, and at Craney's they are living three and four in a
room; the joy of being really there on the Point, near the cadets,
aroused by the morning gun and shrill piping of the reveille, saluted
hourly by the notes of the bugle, enabled to see the gray uniforms half
a dozen times a day and to actually speak or walk with the wearers half
an hour out of twenty-four whole ones, being apparent compensation for
any crowding or discomfort. Indeed, crowded as they are, the girls at
Craney's are objects of boundless envy to those whom the Fates have
consigned to the resorts down around the picturesque but distant
"Falls." There is a little coterie at "Hawkshurst" that is fiercely
jealous of the sisterhood in the favored nook at the north edge of the
Plain, and one of their number, who is believed to have completely
subjugated that universal favorite, Cadet McKay, has been heard to say
that she thought it an outrage that they had to come home so early in
the evening and mope away the time without a single cadet, when up there
at Craney's the halls and piazzas were full of gray-coats and bell
buttons every night until tattoo.

A very brilliant and pretty girl she is, too, and neither Mrs. McKay nor
Nannie can wonder at it that Will's few leisure moments are monopolized.
"You are going to have me all to yourself next week, little mother," he
laughingly explains; "and goodness knows when I'm going to see Miss
Waring again." And though neither mother nor sister is at all satisfied
with the state of affairs, both are too unselfish to interpose. How many
an hour have mothers and, sometimes, sisters waited in loneliness at the
old hotel for boys whom some other fellow's sister was holding in silken
fetters somewhere down in shady "Flirtation!"

It was with relief inexpressible that Mrs. McKay and Uncle Jack had
hailed the coming of the 1st of June. Wi