ill you say to Miss Sanford that I would greatly like to see her a few
minutes?" he persisted. And then Miss Sanford came to head of the
stairs,--no further.

"What is it, Mr. Gleason? I cannot come down," she said, very civilly,
but uncompromising for all that.

"Er--I hoped you felt like--er--taking a walk or something."

"Thanks, Mr. Gleason. I am too busy to-day."

"Well, shall we say to-morrow, then?" he persevered.

"To-morrow I go riding with Mrs. Stannard."

"Do you? What time? Perhaps I can arrange to take a gallop at the same
hour. You've never ridden with me yet." (Reproachfully.)

"You will have to ask Mrs. Stannard. Now, Mr. Gleason, I must go back to
my desk. Good-morning." And she vanished, sweet and smiling, and he
"went off mad," swearing mad.

That very afternoon an ambulance arrived from Laramie with Ray. Oh, what
a jubilee they had! and how those women fluttered around him as he sat
in a low reclining-chair on the piazza of the quarters made ready for
him! A young assistant surgeon was with him, whom Ray cajoled and
bullied alternately; called him such military pet names as "Pills,"
"Squills," and "Sawbones" whenever he had occasion to address him;
laughed him out of all his feeble protests against "exciting himself,"
and bade him reserve his ministrations for Blake, who would be in on the
morrow. The evening he came, after he had been shaved and bathed and
rebandaged, and had his hair trimmed, and had donned a very swell
brand-new fatigue uniform, in which he looked remarkably natty and well
despite a slight pallor, Ray had insisted on being trundled up the row
in a wheeled chair, and there at Mrs. Stannard's they had a little
rejoicing of their own,--Ray and the young surgeon being surrounded by
the ladies of the --th for an hour, when Mrs. Wilkins had to go off to
her brood, Mrs. Turner to visit some infantry friends, and then, awhile
longer, Miss Sanford sat and listened to the eager talk of Mrs. Stannard
and Grace with the dark-eyed cavalryman, and those dark eyes of his
sought hers every other minute. They tried to get him to talk of his
ride. Even Grace, declaring that he must, and turning laughingly to her
friend, exclaimed,--"Come, Maidie, add your plea. You have a right to
know how your colors went;" and Miss Sanford's face flamed with its
sudden blush, but she spoke no word. Mrs. Stannard, smiling and happy,
but seeing everything as usual, noted that Ray, too, had flushed
undernea