marshal's _bâton_ in his knapsack."

"I'm afraid you won't have room for it if you carry all the things that
I know of intended for you in this and other families."

"Yes; but, Polly, you know, or perhaps you don't know, a _bâton_ is like
a college love--no matter how full your heart is, you can always find
room for another!"

"John," Mistress Sprague reproves mildly; "how can you? I don't like to
hear my son talk like that even in jest. Don't get the idea that it is
soldierly to treat sacred things with levity. Love is a very sacred
thing; it ought to be part of a man's religion; it was of your
father's."

"Then Jack must be a high priest, for there are a dozen girls here and
in the city who believe themselves enshrined in that elastic heart."

"Olympia, you are a baleful influence on your brother. If anything could
reconcile me to his going it is the thought that he will escape the
extraordinary speech and manners you have brought back from New York. Do
the Misses Pomfret graduate all their young ladies with such a tone and
laxity of speech as you have lately shown? Strangers would naturally
think that you had no training at home."

"Don't fear, mamma; strangers are not favored with my lighter vein; I
assume that for you and Jack, to keep your minds from graver things. I
preserve the senatorial suavity of speech and the Sprague austerity of
manner 'before folks,' as Aunt Merry would say. Which reminds me, Jack,
Kitty Moore declares that you are responsible for Barney's enlisting.