fused, despite all the
efforts of her employers, to be tempered by Kindergarten views.

Miss Stannard looked up hastily, and so did the twenty pairs of eyes
about her table.

From the depths of one pocket the Major had produced a cigarette, and
from the mixed contents of another he had extracted a match, and as the
twenty pairs of eyes fell on him, a fascinating curl of blue smoke was
just issuing from his lips.

'Tildy Peggins folded her arms on her flat chest and gave vent to a
groan. Already, with her gloomy views on Kindergarten regeneration
versus innate depravity, she foresaw the contamination of every
half-subjugated small masculine in the room.

Miss Stannard, with a shake of her head at 'Tildy, coughed slightly.
Instantly the eyes of the school left the Major and fixed themselves
expectantly on her pretty face.

"I thought you wanted to be a soldier, Major," she observed, addressing
the small gentleman.

"I is goin' to be," returned that unabashed gentleman, calmly sticking a
thumb in his belt, and in so doing pushing his jacket aside, so as to
further expose the military trappings about his round little person,
"I's a-goin' to be a sojer in the Fourth Regiment."

"No, indeed," said Miss Ruth, "the members of the Fourth Regiment are
gentlemen, and a gentleman would never have smoked in here without
asking if he might."

The Major looked somewhat moved out of his usual imperturbability. The
curl of offending smoke ceased.

"I know a soldier," Miss Ruth went on calmly, "and what is more, he is a
member of the Fourth Regiment, but he never would have done such a
thing as you are doing."

The cigarette trembled in the Major's irresolute fingers.

"And even if you had asked first," the steady voice went on, "I would
have said no, for such a thing as smoking is never allowed in this
room."

The Major's irresolute brown eyes met Miss Stannard's resolute brown
ones. Then the cigarette went out the open window behind him and the
work at the tables went on.

Presently Miss Ruth looked up again. "Won't you come," she said
pleasantly, touching a pile of the gay papers. "Are you not tired?"

The Major shook his head decidedly. "No, he would not," and finding a
chip among the apparently inexhaustible stores of his pockets, he next
produced a knife boasting an inch of blade and went to whittling upon
'Tildy's immaculate floor.

Miss Ruth saw it all, and presently saw the chip fall to the floor and
the rou